Reinventing
by Checkerboards
Summary: -Sorrow 5- "The error of one moment becomes the sorrow of a whole life." - Chinese proverb
1. Getting In

The most useless piece of advice ever given is this: "Expect the unexpected." It's impossible. The unexpected, by its very definition, is _unexpectable_. If the unexpected happens, then you've hardly expected it, have you? It's this kind of logical conundrum that sends philosophers mad at an early age.

The most useful piece of advice in any situation, however, is this: "Watch out".

* * *

Doctors at Arkham Asylum were generally unfazed by the antics of their patients. In a way, it was like caring for a fox that had been born with the ability to pick the lock on the henhouse door. Every day, they heard about the nighttime depredations of their charges, and every day, they vowed to keep the doors locked tighter to avoid another nasty incident.

It was easy to dismiss some of these occurrences. With the detachment of those who watch the news every morning, the doctors noted each murder and moved on. But now...well, now things were different.

Sorrow had tracked down her ex-doctor and killed him. The rogues just didn't _do_ that. Okay, so the Joker had bombed a staff meeting and killed Dr. Jackson - but that was different. For one, it was the _Joker_, and he was likely to do anything that caught his fancy. There probably hadn't been any kind of personal vendetta involved, just a need to watch those in charge panic and flutter about like frightened pigeons. Were there personal vendettas among the rogues and the doctors? Absolutely, but the rogues tended to forget them after they slipped their leashes. After all, in the big, bright, shiny world, who had time to worry about some stupid doctor back in the asylum that they definitely wouldn't be seeing ever again?

Sorrow did. And certainly, he'd deserved it - anyone with those kind of sadistic tendencies deserved to be neatly removed from the population at large - but no one had expected him to actually die. Everyone had simply assumed that she'd play with him for a while until Batman got involved.

The staff of Arkham, who bore at least part of the blame for Teng's death after their game of Hide-the-Paperwork, didn't take it well at all. They couldn't be held responsible. This could not be their fault. They were the _good_ guys! And so, with this guilt bouncing in the backs of their brains like a dancing imp, they began to play a new game: Pass the Blame.

* * *

Sorrow lazed on her bed, enjoying the feel of her own rather stiff mattress after another round in solitary. This time hadn't been nearly as entertaining as the other - there had been a man crouched outside, watching her through her door, ordering her in an almost plaintive bark to keep her gloves on and keep her hands off the walls whenever she moved.

The only good thing about it had been the occasional guard passing by. Sorrow, feigning sleep on the floor, had listened in to hours of conversation and asylum gossip. Eddie had a new girlfriend, apparently, and the guards were taking bets as to how long this one would last. The tale of Batman's arrest of no less than four rogues at the local amusement park entertained her for most of an afternoon. When the guards were quiet, though, all it took to bring a smile to her face was the thought of Teng, by now nothing more than a lump of rot in a coffin somewhere.

After a long, boring few days, she'd been allowed back into her cell. She wondered how long she should bother to stay this time. Two? Three days? She chuckled to herself. They hadn't yet replicated Teng's gloves, and the only attempt they'd made to lock her hands down was a double-thick layer of dishwashing gloves wrapped at the wrists with duct tape. She could have that off in minutes.

An orderly opened her door. "Time for walkies," he said warily. Sorrow oozed to the floor and stretched, pulling her hands behind her back for just long enough to make the orderly nervous. "Uh - you gotta wear this. Doctor's orders," he added hurriedly, moving inside so she could see the straitjacket clutched in his right hand.

She tilted her head questioningly. "Why?"

The orderly, looking somewhat like a child at his first trip to the dentist, gulped. "Uh…see, it's your hands. The doc thinks that if this is on, you'll, uh…"

"Not be able to use my hands?" she finished with a smirk. "That _is_ the point of asylum attire, isn't it?"

"Please, just put it on." Sweat began to drip down his neck and darken the neck of his green scrubs. Sorrow slowly tilted her head, examining him closely from head to foot. Nervously, he extended the jacket and jingled the straps against the floor.

In one smooth motion, Sorrow whipped her hands around at the level of his throat and leaned forward. The orderly scrambled backward, tripping on the straps of the jacket, and slid on his backside into the hallway, kicking frantically in the air as he tried to right himself.

"What's wrong?" she said brightly as the man rolled to his feet. "I thought I had to put my hands up to put the jacket on!" Innocence coated her words as thoroughly as chocolate on a Snickers bar. Unfortunately, the innocence in her voice didn't stretch as far as the expression on her face, which was currently displaying the nougat of amused mischievousness.

The orderly scowled at the sight of her thoroughly gloved hands, still raised in the air, and yanked the jacket open. Sorrow allowed herself to be wrapped in the jacket, smirking as she felt the man fumbling with the buckles in the back. She'd go to see this doctor, to break up the monotony of being in the cell if nothing else, and perhaps she'd overhear something useful regarding the guard's schedules. And, of course, she'd have to come up with a new plan to get her door open - the old 'I hurt myself and need help _now_' excuse probably wasn't going to be useful again in the near future.

She was so busy thinking about the future that she very nearly forgot about the present. When she stopped toying with her plans, she was surprised to find that they had made it past the huge steel door that protected the therapy offices from the rest of the asylum. In fact, the orderly had dragged her halfway down the hall already. Using one hand, stiff with anger, he propelled her over the threshold and directly into the little office. She stumbled, trying to stop before she rammed into the little chair bolted to the floor in front of the desk, and caught herself just as a white-coated arm reached out to steady her.

Oh. _Him_. Sorrow had almost forgotten about Dr. Grey. She had been rather busy, after all, what with the escape, the murder, running around the city and meeting up with Batman. She jerked her arm pointedly out of his grasp and seated herself regally in the little chair, staring right past him to the barred window. The handful of trees on the lawn below, stripped of their leaves, swayed in the cold fall wind.

Her view was cut off as Grey seated himself behind his desk. "Uh...hi," he hazarded, fidgeting with a pen.

She shifted her gaze to the bare white wall. The dirt of years outlined a pattern of rectangles on the wall, where the posters that had been stuck there with masking tape had been removed.

"I, um, haven't seen you for a while. Is everything...all right?"

The masking tape had been there long enough to dry out and adhere permanently to the paint in little crosshatches. It almost looked like some kind of fungus.

"Remember when we used to talk?" he said wistfully. "I really liked that."

Maybe it _was_ a fungus. No...they'd never let plants grow in the offices. Not with Ivy around. The whiteness of the wall was blotted out by the whiteness of a lab coat as Grey stood firmly in front of her. "Hey," he said. "I'm trying to - "

She turned to view the other wall. He skipped around her and planted himself in front of her again. She turned. He skipped.

He wanted her attention? Fine. She focused her best I-Hate-Everything stare on him and glared.

"I know you're angry at me," he wheezed, coughing from the unaccustomed effort of playing Ring-Around-the-Rogue. "I don't know why, though!"

She continued to glare at him.

"Could we at least talk about it? I mean, it is what you're here for..." he smiled tentatively. An attempt at a joke deserved a double helping of glare. He wilted slightly under the stream of visual fury and leaned against his desk.

Humans, as a rule, don't like silent stares. People are social, because the niceties of social interaction make us aware that we're safe. If a stranger approaches someone at a bus stop and starts gushing about a puppy, it's a pretty safe bet that the stranger's not out to punch them in the head. Smiles and chatting are for people who are safe. Silent stares are for predators.

"Look, just tell me what I did, okay?" he pleaded. "So I don't do it again?"

Sorrow continued to glare at him through narrowed eyes. It wasn't what he _did_, it was what he _was_. Relationships at Arkham were generally difficult to define, since there were many unnameable layers between 'friend' and 'acquaintance'. Some people could be shuffled into the category of 'will converse politely, provided you agree that their delusions are reality'. Some people could be counted on to interpret _you_ as part of the delusion and worship or attack you accordingly. Thankfully, some people could simply be relied on for a laugh, a funny story, or at the very least knowledge that they saw you as a person and would maybe notice if you disappeared one day.

Troy Grey had been in that third category - that is, until he'd shown himself to be an uncaring bastard as he waltzed past her cell that day. She'd been concerned about him - she'd actually been stupid enough to care if the Joker had killed him! - and he'd strolled past with barely a 'hello'. Well, if he didn't really care, then neither did she.

So, in answer to his question, she merely turned up the intensity of her glare. Grey shifted uncomfortably in his spot for a moment, then sighed. "All right. Fine. You're not in the mood to talk, for some reason, so maybe I'll do some talking instead. Let's see what the orderlies have to say about things recently." He retreated behind his desk and flipped open a folder, pawing through it until he reached a few pages full of multicolored scribbles. "Eight AM - patient displayed aggressive behaviors toward me. Ten AM - patient informed me that I'd be dead soon. When questioned, her only response was the phrase 'Everyone dies'. Four PM - The bitch faked like she touched me and I spent half a day in the hospital wing tied to a bed before they figured out it was just pudding. To hell with her and to hell with this job!"

Grey flicked the folder closed. "That was his version of a resignation note. You're not making it easier for yourself by doing this," he said quietly. "You can't threaten the orderlies like that!"

"Can't I?" Sorrow snapped.

"You shouldn't!" Grey said, his authoritative indignation somewhat overshadowed by his joy that she'd deigned to speak to him. "The other doctors are starting to notice, Sorrow, particularly Dr. Carlson. They're not happy."

"To hell with them. What else could they possibly do to me?"

Grey blinked. "A lot, really," he said cautiously. "They wanted me to double your meds, or put you back into solitary at the very least. It took me half an hour to convince them that maybe talking to you first would be a good idea."

Sorrow shrugged carelessly. "Whatever."

"Would you rather have had me _not_ argue?" he said incredulously. "Do you _like_ solitary? I'm only trying to help you as best I can -"

"Oh, knock it off," she snarled. "You don't really care about me, so you can stop pretending that you do!"

His eyebrows furrowed as if she'd presented him with one of the Riddler's puzzles. "What?"

"You. Don't. _Care_," she explained, slowly and patiently.

"Of course I do!" He slammed a hand down onto the desk. "I'm here, right now, doing nothing but trying to help you!"

"It's your _job_. You'd be doing the same if I was any other schlub in a straitjacket."

"Bullshit!" He slapped a hand over his mouth, instantly regretting the obscenity. "I mean, no, that's ridiculous," he corrected. "Now that everyone's back out of the hospital, you're my only patient, and I like it that way. The rest of them are..." He bit his lip, possibly trying to think of a polite way to say that they were irreparably broken. "...they're _sick_," he said definitively. "You're the only one who's actually got a chance at walking out of here one day!"

"I walked out of here two weeks ago," she pointed out.

"And if you'd stop doing things like that, you could be out of here - for _good_ - in less than a year!" he snapped.

"Less than a...you're kidding me," she said flatly.

"In order to leave, you've got to be sane. In order to be sane, you've got to behave yourself and get your doctor to sign your release." He ran a hand through his hair. "If you really, truly tried, I could help you get out of here...because I care about what happens to you," he added, mostly to himself.

Sorrow was taken aback. He couldn't mean that. "Do you really think that -"

The orderly flung the door open. "Sorry to interrupt. Session's over, right, doc? Right," he went on, not even letting Troy speak. "And we've got the next client coming in, and Dr. Palmer wants her new office back, so we've got to get you back home."

"Why-" Troy glanced at the other doctor's schedule splayed on the desk and blanched. "Good man. It was nice talking to you again, Sorrow," he said amiably as she made a face at him.

The orderly pulled her to her feet and yanked her toward the door. "What's the rush?" she said, dragging her feet.

"Just come _on_," the orderly begged, tugging on her arm. "Hurry up before-"

A familiar chuckle from the outer office made Sorrow realize just who the next appointment was. She narrowed her eyes and allowed the orderly to pull her out of the room. As they walked into the outer office, they saw another pair of orderlies waiting patiently with the Joker, who was also tucked neatly inside a straitjacket.

"If it isn't our little Sorrow!" he giggled. "Sad to see you."

"Shut up, Joker," she hissed as she walked past him. She knew what would come next. A laceless-shoed foot would snake around her ankle and she'd be on the ground. She pointedly high-stepped over his extended foot and began to stalk away.

Unfortunately, there was more than one way to trip someone, as Sorrow discovered when the Joker kicked her hard in the back of the knee. She staggered forward, colliding with the doorframe, and whirled around to glare at the clown as he giggled. "Grow up," she snapped as her orderly steered her into the hallway.

"See you soon!" he called after her airily. As he sauntered past Troy, he grinned conspiratorially. "Women, eh?"

* * *

Sorrow entertained herself in the following days by scaring the orderlies. It was a petty and small pleasure, to be sure, but then again, no one was claiming she was sane enough to demand a better class of happiness. Well, Dr. Grey may have been, but he was hardly a reliable source.

At the moment, she was engaged in a one-sided staring contest with Horace Stufington. She stood in front of her door, staring at him through the tiny window, as he rattled her tray out of the food cart and carefully counted her silverware onto it. He glanced up, met her eyes, and focused on the tray again as he maneuvered it down to the slot in her door. As it slid halfway through, he kept a careful hand on the edge so that it wouldn't tip and spill her dinner.

She reached to remove it from the slot and playfully tapped him on the hand. He cursed and scrambled backward, examining his hand for any signs of a black mark.

"Tag! You're it!" she giggled, waving her hand…her _gloved_ hand…at Horace. He let out another curse as he grabbed the meal cart's handle and stomped down the hallway toward his next delivery.

Sorrow moved away from the slot in the door, dropping the tray on the foot of her bed as she took a seat next to it. In the back of her mind, she scolded herself for playing tricks on him again. She wasn't behaving any better than the Joker.

Speaking of the Joker…her gaze wandered over to the knife mark in her floor that they hadn't bothered to fix. She walked over to it and attempted once again to stomp the tiny flap of linoleum flat. What was it he'd said to her? "See you soon." She knew, and presumably he did too, that she wasn't technically allowed out of her cell until she started behaving herself again. She'd also heard via Horace's continuous stream of curses and invective that the Joker had gotten himself committed to the solitary wing once again.

_Maybe that's why I tease him,_ she thought. _I know he'd never tell me anything if I was _nice_ to him!_

The meal, when she bothered to go lift the cover, was tuna casserole. She groaned and slammed the lid back on. Nearly anything was better than Arkham's tuna casserole. A deep-fried brick with extra mortar, for example. And thanks to her prolonged bout of refusing food, they watched what she ate almost as closely as they watched the schedule of inmates to prevent certain personalities from contact with one another.

The hallway looked fairly empty. She crept to the window and looked down the halls as far as she could for any sign of orderlies. No one was there. She grabbed the plate and scraped all of the revolting tuna into the toilet bowl, placing the plate neatly back on the tray before flushing the evidence.

Horace showed up fifteen minutes later with a matched set of scratches on either side of his face, mumbling something about inmates who didn't know what was good for them. He peered closely at her plate when he took it out of the room, counted the silverware, and tossed it in the rack.

"What's up with the face, Horace? You lose a fight with a weed whacker?"

Horace's glare snapped in her direction. He slammed the empty tray down on top of the others without looking and growled "No. This damn system of assigning inmates to us has got to go, like, now. I don't know how I got picked for both you and clown face, but tassel-head won't stop bugging me about either of you. It's a good thing I'm not in charge of the green queen, or I'd probably lose it. I'm not allowed to tell tassel-head about her lover boy, but she won't stop with the questions whenever she sees me. I finally told her she wasn't ever going to see him again if the docs had their way about it and she attacked me! Her doc tells me her meds are making her violent. Ha! Like _that's_ an excuse. And as for hat-hair and question-boy arguing over that damn raven riddle every time they see each other…"

Sorrow watched, fascinated, as he dug through the cart while making his complaints known to anyone within a two-foot span of him. He didn't stop talking even when the spoon container fell to the ground and spat out a shower of silverware.

"I'll be back for _you_ in half an hour. Sessions today."

"Casual dress?" she joked.

"Oh, no. We're doing you up in a formal jacket today. Made of velvet and jewels." He rolled his eyes at her as he picked up the last spoon and threw it in the box. "And maybe if you're good, doctor will give you a lollipop," he taunted as he rolled the cart down the hall.

Sorrow grinned and plonked herself down on the bed. They'd still stuck to that stupid policy of putting her in a jacket every time she left the cell. Rumor had it that they were trying to rebuild the gloves that Teng had locked to her hands. She'd made certain that rumors went back the other way that anyone trying to lock gloves onto her would live to regret it.

* * *

Grey was wrist-deep in a pile of paper when Horace ushered her into his office. As usual, Horace made sure she was sitting quietly before he left - and as usual, when he turned to leave she stuck her tongue out at him.

Horace left, letting the door click audibly behind him. Grey glanced up, momentarily baffled, then saw Sorrow sitting in the chair opposite him. He sighed and looked back down at the papers. "What's up, doc?" she asked playfully. He didn't answer until after he tapped the papers into neat piles.

"I've…_we've_ been going through records recently, Sorrow," he said in a solemn tone. Sorrow was instantly on guard. He was never this serious so soon. "And the senior staff has decided…" Grey bent the corner of a report back and forth, twiddling it around and not meeting Sorrow's eyes.

"What? What did they decide?" she blurted out.

"They've decided to move certain inmates to a different part of the asylum. A more…secure part," he added at her blank stare. "The rooms in the basement have been specially remodified and reinforced. They started the work months ago, before the Joker killed Dr. Jackson. It was mainly for him…he gets out of the upstairs cells so easily…"

He coughed. "Anyway, since they had the workers there, they decided to remake a whole wing of the basement to accommodate…the dangerous inmates."

"So the Joker's going down there? Nice," she smiled. If _that_ was all there was...

"They've also decided that…well, you've been threatening your orderly, and you did escape so easily last time…"

Her eyes widened with surprise. "No. No, you can't mean…Hey, I was just…I was _kidding_…and I-"

"Kidding?" He flattened the corner of the report with the palm of his hand. "Well, because of that, you're now the Joker's neighbor. Congratulations," he snapped bitterly.

"You can't let them stick me down there!" she gasped.

"I don't have a choice in this, Sorrow!" His hands gripped the sides of the desk as he fought to get some control in his voice.

"Who else?" she demanded. "Who else-"

"I am not telling you who decided this," Troy stated grimly. "I'm not allowed-"

"Screw that," she interrupted. "I don't _care_ who decided it. I want to know who else is going down. Who I'll be living near."

Troy fumbled for the right paper. "Uh. You and the Joker…"

Sorrow shot him a poisonous look. "We've established that."

"Historically, when Ivy's first brought in, she's trouble for the first week or so, so whenever she's caught, she'll be down there for a while."

Sorrow glared at him. "But who _now_ is going down there?"

He glanced at the paper and then set it down softly. "You don't know them."

"What do you mean?"

"They're from other parts of the asylum. Arkham's not just for rogues, you know. There's whole wings full of schizophrenics, sociopaths and split personalities...well, mostly schizophrenics - "

Sorrow was feeling ill. "You mean, it's me and the Joker, and a bunch of garden-variety whack jobs?"

"I wouldn't use that term, but in a nutshell, yes."

"He knew," Sorrow muttered. "That damn-"

"Who knew?" Troy interrupted.

"The goddamn Joker knew!" she hissed. "Last week, he told me he'd see me soon. Dammit!" She kicked the desk irritably. "Why just me and the Joker? Why not anyone else? Harley's killed more people than me by a long shot! Jervis takes over people's minds! What about Eddie or Clayface or Mr. Freeze?"

"I know. But you…well, I mean, you're more of a threat than them." He forestalled her angry shout with an upraised hand. "Victor can't be in the warm without his suit. Keep the suit away, and he's harmless. Clayface isn't even in the building right now, but when he is, he has his own private cell that he can't break open. And the Riddler, the Mad Hatter, even Harley in some respects can't operate without their weapons. When they're unarmed, they're in our control."

"And I'm uncontrollable, I suppose?" she sneered.

"I'd say you're unpredictable. We can't lock gloves on your hands. We don't have an antidote for your hands. If you had your gloves off and you decided I should die, I'd _die_. When the Riddler threatens an orderly with death, they aren't afraid to touch him and-"

"And sedate the hell out of him. I know, I know. I've seen it," she sighed.

"I didn't want you to go down there," he said abruptly. "I was against it. But when you tease the orderlies…I couldn't get them to listen to me."

Their time had passed almost before they knew it, and Troy winced as he heard the door open. Sorrow craned her head over her shoulder to see a pair of absolutely massive men lurking in the doorway. "We're here," they announced rather redundantly.

"The session isn't over yet," Troy pointed out.

The two men shrugged. "Like it matters. We gotta have her down there now. Orders."

"Oh. Um, well, Sorrow, I'll see you tomorrow - "

"You mean next week," one man corrected as he effortlessly picked Sorrow up by one arm. She yelped as the straitjacket bit into her skin. "We're only supposed to bring 'em up once a week, 'cuz it's too dangerous to keep haulin' em in and out."

Grey sighed. "Then I'll see you next week, I guess."

"No, wait!" Sorrow said desperately. "I'll stop! You don't understand!" But the men had already dragged her out the door and into the hall.

(_to be continued_)


	2. Getting Out

If Hell had apartments, they would look like the high-security cells in Arkham's basement.

Sorrow, numb with shock, had been marched down flights of creaky old stairs and through more locked doors than she cared to think about before they arrived at a solid steel door. Lights twinkled green as one of the brutes swiped his keycard in the slot. The door clanked open to reveal another door, barely six feet away from the first. The orderly slid his card again and shepherded Sorrow through into a bare concrete hallway lined with more heavy-looking metal doors. Her name was sloppily stenciled on the first door to the left. With one more swipe of the keycard, the pair of them opened the door and shoved her inside.

This couldn't be happening. She hadn't done anything to deserve this...this _hole_ of a room! Okay, so she'd killed a few people, but...well, the _Ventriloquist_ had killed more people than she ever had, by a long shot! Granted, he'd been working in this town for a lot longer than she had, and sure, he didn't tease the orderlies, but -

The door slammed behind her. "Hey," she protested, whirling around to try and stop them. The straitjacket's rough fabric scraped against the back of her neck. "Can't you get me out of this thing?"

"Not our job," one of them called back to her. Which one was hard to tell, given that the door and walls were totally solid from floor to ceiling. In fact, the only spot of safety glass was located in the corner, behind a grid of iron bars, protecting a small security camera that buzzed as it turned to focus on Sorrow.

She stepped to the left. The camera followed her. She backed up and darted to the right. The camera obediently tracked her movements like a dog watching someone eat a steak. Okay...that was annoying. She kicked the door, more out of habit than anything else, and turned around to survey her new home.

The bedframe was exactly the same as the one in her old cell - a series of heavy metal strips welded together and bolted to the floor, low enough to prevent any but the thinnest of prisoners hiding below it. The mattress, however, appeared to be a big nylon sack stuffed with - she prodded it experimentally with one foot - foam. Great. A thick nylon blanket, heavily quilted, stretched stiffly across the little bed. The one-piece steel sink and toilet combination was attached to the floor directly across from the bed. The room was empty of anything else, except another metal grid protecting the raised ceiling light.

Sorrow slouched against the wall and glared at the camera. Okay. She was in an underground room, with no windows, with a bunch of people who weren't particularly concerned about her well-being watching her every movement. Oh, that wasn't a familiar situation at _all_. Sweat began oozing down the back of her neck as she fought off memories of Teng and his exceedingly well-stocked basement.

Why the _hell_ hadn't she tried to break out earlier? Why had she wasted precious time with teasing the orderlies when she could have been out the door and back into Gotham at any time? Now here she was, in this room that reeked of fresh construction and new fear, with no hope of even going _upstairs_ for a full week...not that being upstairs was that much better, in the grand scheme of things, but at least it was something. Being down here was like being trapped in steerage rather than first class as the Titanic wallowed in the icy waters. It would have been nice to at least have a view as her world destroyed itself around her.

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and rested the back of her head against the cold concrete of the wall. It would be okay. There was only one week until she saw Troy again, and she could easily behave herself until then. When they saw that she'd toe the line, they'd let her back upstairs. That was the plan. It would work. It had to.

* * *

Attics have a certain reputation. Generally, when people think of attics, they think of storage - boxes of seasonal decorations that will eventually be useful again, toys waiting for the next generation to grow into them, and invariably, boxes of junk that can't be thrown out but can't really be tolerated in the house.

Arkham's attic was crammed with all sorts of interesting stuff. The asylum had been operational for well over a hundred years, during which psychiatry had evolved through a number of fascinating methods regarding the extinction of psychosis. The inmates nowadays required very little in the realms of physical treatment, thanks to the Thorazine revolution in the early sixties. As a result, the dusty space between the top floor and the roof was stacked high with examples of nearly every archaic mental-health device imaginable: chairs, tubs, beds, and boxes, all outfitted with the very finest of leather straps suitable for the most discerning lunatic. Spiders spun their webs over the occasional dusty window, hoping to snare flies too dazzled by the light to bother looking where they were going.

They weren't the only living creatures up there, though. In his cramped, musty office, Troy Grey hunched resolutely over his desk and ran his Exacto knife down the borders of the next article to be filed. "_JOKER KILLS DOZENS IN SUBWAY SPREE_," the headline screamed. Troy barely even registered the carnage in the picture as he methodically smoothed the article onto a rubber-cement-smeared piece of card.

Some remote instinct twitched in the back of his head. He pawed at his shirtsleeve, revealing the cheap goldish watch wrapped around his wrist. _Two o'clock! I'll be late for..._ He slumped back in his seat. No, he wouldn't be late. There was nothing to be late for anymore.

Troy sighed and lightly frisbeed the new Joker article onto the top of a file cabinet to dry. If this had been a normal day, he'd be heading downstairs now, to get ready for another session with Sorrow. It wasn't fair. He had _liked_ being a real doctor for once. It was great to actually have a patient - and not one like Ivy or Quinn, either, he hurriedly amended, remembering his abortive attempt to treat the pair of them. No, Sorrow was...well, once he'd managed to get her thawed out a bit, she was fun. She listened to him and she liked his stories - okay, so it probably hadn't been the best idea in the world to tell them to her, since doing so could have gotten him in serious trouble with the management - but she was a lot friendlier than his fellow staff members ever were.

His drumming fingers landed on the blade of his Exacto knife. Pain sparked up his hand. A droplet of blood splattered on his blotter, leaving a permanent crimson reminder of his absentmindedness for anyone to see. He stuck his finger in his mouth, trying to simultaneously curse himself and suck on his injury without chewing himself to bits.

_Why'd they have to put her in the stupid high-security wing, anyway? _he sulked, leaning back in his creaky old chair. _It's not like she'd actually _hurt_ anyone. Not nowadays, anyway. The only one she'd wanted to kill had been Teng, for obvious reasons, and now he's dead, so no one else has anything to worry about! She was clearly just teasing them a little because she was bored. Anyone would be bored, locked in those cells all the time. _

She was probably bored now. He could only imagine how boring it would be to be...well, to be wherever they'd put her. He didn't have the security clearance to go down there to investigate for himself.

He flicked the treacherous knife to the side of his desk and opted for the scissors to cut out the next article. _As long as she behaves herself_, he thought as he neatly scissored around a picture of a sleepy Riddler being handcuffed on a park bench, _surely I can get them to let her out of there. _He brightened at the thought. Yes, he'd go talk to Dr. Carlson about it at the staff meeting tomorrow and everything would turn out okay. It had to.

* * *

Troy traditionally didn't have a lot to say in staff meetings. As the official archivist, his opinion was generally only asked for when the doctors needed to know what the public were thinking - and since everyone already _knew_ what the public thought about rogues and the asylum, Troy spent a lot of his time sketching pointless doodles in his notebook while the doctors took care of important business.

Today, though, would be different. He took his seat immediately, tapping his fingers impatiently on the table as he waited for the others to settle down for the meeting. One by one, the doctors slowly gravitated to their spots, carefully 'dropping' pencils and 'tying shoes' in order to glance beneath the table and make sure it was bomb-free. No one wanted to end up like Dr. Jackson had.

Finally, the table was fully ringed with professionals in white coats. Troy fidgeted through the first few minutes of the meeting, not paying too much attention to the usual list of eloped patients and injured staff. He bounced one knee under the table as he waited for Dr. Carlson to finish the round of announcements and news that seemed to take forever and a day.

At last, Dr. Carlson laid his papers down. "Are there any issues that haven't been mentioned yet?"

Troy shot to his feet and instantly regretted it as everyone looked curiously at him. "I, uh...I just wanted to ask...um..." he stammered, hot embarrassment boiling into his face, "well...why my sessions with, uh, Sorrow turned into weekly ones. Instead of daily. Um."

Dr. Carlson raised an eyebrow. "Because she was moved to the high-security wing," he explained patiently.

"I know that," Troy said. He could feel the blush staining his face an even darker red. "I mean, but, I don't see how taking away therapy is going to, um, help her. P-particularly since it's got to be...rough...down there."

"What's your point?" Dr. Lily asked, irritated.

"Well, we were making progress. Sort of. Um...she was getting close to telling me, you know, things. And now she's probably not going to," he said uncertainly. "I mean, does she really have to be there?"

"Does she..." Dr. Carlson trailed off, not quite believing what he'd just heard.

"She's a psychopath!" Dr. Lucas exploded. "Of _course_ she belongs in there!"

"She's not!" Troy snapped. Sweat began trickling down his back as the doctors stared at him in shock. "I mean, she's not _completely_ a...She wouldn't hurt any of us, anyway," he mumbled defiantly.

"No? I take it you don't remember Dr. Teng?" Dr. Lucas said icily.

"He was a monster!"

"And now he's dead. Who do you think she'll decide is a monster next?" Dr. Lucas asked. "You? Me?" He pointed an accusing thumb at Dr. Carlson. "_Him_?"

"Well, how is locking her in the basement supposed to help her figure out that we're not monsters?" Troy said, looking desperately for support among the other doctors. "We have to bring her back upstairs to show her that -"

"No," Dr. Carlson said flatly. "She stays in the high-security wing. End of discussion." He turned to Dr. Baldwin. "You were telling me yesterday that -"

"But it's not actually _helping_ her much, is it?" Troy interrupted, bewildered. "I mean, she's not going to get any better down there. None of them are!"

Dr. Baldwin sighed. "They're not _going_ to get better. Face facts, son, some people are so broken that they cannot be fixed." Dr. Carlson cleared his throat pointedly. "We have to try, of course," Dr. Baldwin continued hurriedly, aware that doctors who weren't able to fix their patients ended up losing their comfortable jobs, "but you should know by now that you cannot help people who don't want to be helped."

"They're _happy_ to keep killing and stealing," Dr. Lucas pointed out, settling his bulk deeper into his padded chair, "and we have to do what we can to make sure that they aren't out there wrecking Gotham. If that means we have to lock a few of them in the basement, well, so be it. In fact, if it works for those two, we might start rotating the others down there to..._calm_ them a bit when they get rambunctious."

Dr. Carlson cleared his throat again, emphatically, flicking his eyes open in a clear signal to Dr. Lucas to shut the hell up _now_. "It's simple, Grey," he said quietly. "She killed a doctor - "

"He was torturing her!" Troy interrupted.

Dr. Carlson held up a hand to silence him. Grudgingly, Troy settled back into his seat. "She's a danger to everyone: the doctors, the orderlies, and even the patients. You recall the incidents with the Joker, as well as Miss Isley, yes? For the safety of everyone in this building she's going to stay down there indefinitely."

"But we're not _helping_ her!" Troy protested, slamming his hands down onto the table. "Are you just going to let her _rot_ down there?"

"Yes," said Dr. Torres bluntly. "Idealism is a fine thing, Grey, but there's a time and a place for it - and inside Arkham's walls is _not it_. Understood?" Troy, tight-lipped, lowered his head in a reluctant nod and glared at his open notebook.

Dr. Torres nodded briskly, tucking a stray hair behind her ear. "Fine. Moving on - we need to replace the lock on the Riddler's door again..."

* * *

Contrary to popular opinion, Sorrow _wasn't_ bored in the basement. Far from it. Boredom generally implies that there's nothing to do, and as Sorrow was discovering, there was _plenty_ to do in the cell.

It had started with the mindless games. Bouncing her pillow one-handed over her head as if she was dribbling a basketball against the ceiling had been entertaining, until the guards had ordered her to stop. Trying to balance her shoe on its rounded, scuffed heel had been mildly amusing, but the guards had put a halt to that as well. Finally, she'd turned the faucet of her tiny sink on just enough to let it drip, and she'd improvised a percussive symphony in time with the dripping water with her gloved hands, her thighs, and anything else that she could smack to make a noise. The guards, unsurprisingly, had ordered her to knock it off almost immediately after she'd started. So, in order to be seen as a good little prisoner, she obligingly turned the faucet off.

But it hadn't _gone_ off. At least, she thought it hadn't. She didn't see any water coming out of it, and the sink was clearly dry whenever she checked, but...she could _swear_ that she heard it dripping.

Five days had passed since she'd been introduced to her new habitat. Five long, tedious days, in which the only outside entertainment had been the occasional meal break. The thickly walled cells prevented any sound from intruding into the cell - and while upstairs, this might have been a blessing, down there it was anything but. She would have given almost anything to hear other people again, even if it was only Jervis chanting lines from 'Alice' or Two-Face snoring.

In fact, the upstairs cells had had a lot of advantages over this one, something that she spent far too much time thinking about. There were _people_ upstairs. Okay, so most of them would gladly try to rip your throat out rather than say 'hello', but they were still company of sorts. You could still sit on your bed and watch them parade by on their way to therapy. And when there weren't inmates to watch, there were guards on patrol, or janitors mopping the floor, or even orderlies running errands for the doctors. Best of all, her cell had had a _window_, and she could see the sun and the sky. Sometimes, there would even be a _bird_!

Inside these four walls, the only thing that moved was the camera - and the only time it moved was when she did. It was far too easy to think that the door wouldn't move again, either - that they had sealed her in forever, until she grew old and decrepit and died in the corner -

_Stop that_, she ordered herself furiously. She shoved herself up from the bed and paced determinedly back and forth across the little cell, her footsteps accompanied by the _whir_ of the camera. She _would_ get out of here. All she had to do was keep a civil tongue with the orderlies when they fed her - and she had, she'd even bit down her pride and apologized for teasing their upstairs counterparts. A rogue, _apologizing_. It was humiliating. Worst of all, though, they hadn't really cared! They'd just dropped off her food, grunted the same line they always said - "Don't make a mess" - and abandoned her to her little cup of soup and half a dry sandwich. No matter what she did, nothing changed. They didn't even turn off the lights at night!

Surprise is the essence of life as a rogue. Generally, the fun lies in surprising _other_ people - like security guards and bank managers - but very few things in life could compare to the adrenaline rush when you step around a corner with your loot to see a carload of cops blocking your path.

Being locked in that quiet, dark little room was like replacing a drunkard's vodka with apple juice. There was no excitement, no drama, no _fun_ to be had...and aside from all of that, Sorrow couldn't shake the nagging feeling that Teng was out there, getting ready to swoop in and make her life hell again.

It was ridiculous. He was _dead_. She'd seen him gut himself. He was dead and she was alive and she was _safe_, no matter how much that camera watched her. It wasn't _his_ camera. But in the night, or at least, that period between dinner and breakfast, he invaded her dreams and sprang out from the walls to pin her down. Her screams of terror probably weren't endearing her to the guards - that is, if they could even _hear_ her screaming from inside the cell.

Who could be bored with _that_ kind of fun to look forward to? She settled back onto the bed and drew her knees up to her chin. Two more days. She could last two more days. She _would_. And then she'd get out of there for good.

* * *

Troy slouched dejectedly behind Dr. Palmer's desk, twirling a pencil between listless fingers as he waited for Sorrow to arrive. It slipped from his grasp and stabbed into the desktop, breaking the lead off with a quiet _snap_. Troy eyed the rebellious writing utensil and chucked it across the room to the garbage can. After all, it was useless now, just like him...

He ran a hand through his hair in frustration and turned around, glaring out of the little window as if everything he hated was lined up on the windowsill. It wasn't _right_. It wasn't _fair_. He was supposed to be helping her! How anyone could be expected to help _any_ patient in these circumstances was beyond him.

The door swung open, revealing an absolutely massive orderly with his hands firmly on Sorrow's straitjacketed shoulders. He walked her inside, sat her roughly on the seat, and stepped back as she meekly huddled into herself. "I'll be back for her in fifteen minutes," he grunted, turning to leave.

"What do you mean, _fifteen minutes_?" Troy demanded. "Sessions are supposed to be a full hour! Well, most of one," he stammered as the orderly pinned him with a cross glare. "Fifty minutes, anyway," he corrected miserably as the orderly's glare shifted deeper into anger. "Um, most of the time."

"Not this one," the orderly shrugged. "I go off-shift in thirty, and I've gotta have _her _back home before I sign off."

Troy felt that distinct wibbly sensation in the knees that always showed up whenever he tried talking to someone that could rip his spine in half without effort. But no! He braced his shoulders and tried to look professional. He was the _doctor_, and this man was an orderly. An _underling_. He could do this. "But that's ridiculous!" he protested, ignoring the bit of his brain that was urgently begging him to shut up. "How are we supposed to talk about anything in only fifteen -"

"It's fine," Sorrow interrupted softly. Troy fought the urge to let his mouth drop open. He'd _never_ heard her speak like that before. "Fifteen minutes is fine," she continued, not raising her gaze from the floor. "I don't want to be a bother."

"Good," the orderly sniffed, slamming the door as he left the conversation.

Troy slumped back into his seat. Failed again. Surprise, surprise. "Well...uh..." He picked up another pencil and twiddled it between his fingers. "How's it going?"

Sorrow raised her head. Her face was creased with anger. "I just spent a week in a tiny room with no windows and lousy room service," she snarled. "How do you _think_ it's going?"

Well, at least she'd only been _pretending_ to be all meek and broken earlier. Still, if that meant she was going to lash out at him...oh, this next fifteen minutes was not going to be pretty. "I'm sorry," he apologized softly.

"I just...it's not...I hate it down there," she said, arms shifting inside her jacket like cats under a blanket. Troy sighed, examined his pencil, and glanced up to see her looking at him with the kind of burning hope that only the near-hopeless can muster up. _Dammit_, he thought miserably.

"So...let's get me out of there," she hinted as he stared numbly at her.

He sighed and _click_ed the pencil down onto the desk. "It's not as easy as that," he said lamely. "Look...I mean...well, they don't listen to me," he mumbled, trying not to think about that roomful of doctors dismissing him like he was only there to bring them their lunch.

Sorrow shook her head, obviously aware that it would take more than a simple 'please' to get her out. "What's it going to take? I haven't killed anyone for...well, okay, it's only been three weeks, but I stopped threatening the orderlies," she pointed out desperately. "I apologized, and I do what they tell me now, and..." She caught sight of the look of futility on Troy's face. "I ate that goddamn tuna casserole, for heaven's sake. _Get me out of there_!"

"I _can't_," he wailed.

"Then what's it going to take? Money? Who wants a bribe?" She leaned closer to him. "Carlson? Lily? _You_?"

"I don't want a bribe!" he snapped, sick at the thought of being caught doing something illegal. "No one does!"

"Are you sure you're thinking of the right place?" Sorrow said. "This is _Arkham_. People take bribes here all the time!"

"You can't bribe the _doctors_," Troy said, one hundred percent inaccurately. "Maybe that works on the orderlies, but not anyone that can do anything about _this_."

He threw himself backward in his chair. This was _impossible_. How could he tempt her with the reward of rejoining the rogues upstairs when his bosses were making it quite clear that that was never going to happen? The carrot _always_ worked better than the stick. Why couldn't they see that?

Well...maybe if he kept after them, they would see it. Maybe if he kept pestering them, and leaving them notes, and voicemail, and letters, and memos...maybe if they couldn't go ten minutes without a reminder that he was unhappy, they'd do something. No...no, they'd think he was some kind of brainwashed puppet and stop him seeing her at all. That would never do. Caring too much about your patients was a good way to be dismissed out of hand - a lesson that he wished he'd known before that staff meeting. He'd have to be subtle about it. In the meantime...the best way to make sure she'd get out of there eventually was for her to keep behaving herself. "The only one that can get you out of that cell is _you_," he said, hurrying to finish as he heard the door handle turning. "It's in your hands now. Can you do it?"

She looked heavily disappointed. "I'll try," she said quietly as the orderly squeezed into the room. Without looking at anything but her own feet, she silently stood up and allowed herself to be steered out of the little door. Their paired footsteps faded into the distance.

Troy stuck the pencil back into its jar and leaned back in the chair, blowing a sigh up his face until it jostled a stray hair loose from his forehead. Provided she kept her promise and remained well-behaved, maybe he'd have an easier time persuading Carlson to go along with him. It would take a long time, though. Anyone could be good in the short-term. Even the Joker had been known to play nice for up to two months at a time in order to pull off some elaborate joke or another.

He got up and trudged back to his little attic. Maybe he'd be able to think of a better plan by next week.

* * *

Sorrow trotted out of the office with the orderly's big, meaty hand wrapped around her shoulder. From the outside, she appeared to be nothing more than an obedient inmate, carefully matching speed with her guard and not daring to think of breaking the rules. Inside, though...inside was an almost entirely different matter.

Troy had said that it was up to her to get out of that cell. Now, he obviously didn't mean for her to break out...did he? He couldn't. It was ridiculous. After all, he didn't want to take a bribe, or offer one to the others, but...well, how _else_ was she supposed to get out? Being a good little girl would just leave her down there, forgotten and alone.

Maybe he _had_ meant for her to escape. He had said that it was 'in her hands'...and what else could he have _possibly_ meant? _In her hands_. If that wasn't a subtle hint, she was the Queen of France - or maybe she'd just spent too much time with the Riddler. Not everyone communicated in phrases that meant six things at once, after all.

She stumbled as the guard pushed her into walking a little faster. It didn't really matter, anyway. If _he_ couldn't get her out, she'd have to get _herself_ out, because she seriously doubted if she could handle that little cell for much longer.

She slowly slouched her way down the stairs, trying to ignore the orderly's hand on her shoulder as she padded along. The winding, creaking stairwell opened directly into the lobby, a design flaw that had helped countless inmates along on the road to freedom. The orderly sped up, trotting Sorrow past the lure of the large, decorative windows, and shoved her roughly into the little hallway that led to the intake rooms and the hospital wing.

Scratches from nervous construction workers marred the wall around a brand-new steel door. Bars ran in a grid along it, snapping neatly into a series of holes that lined the doorframe. The handle looked as if it had most recently been used as the handle to the cage of a rabid elephant. This door, of all doors, was a door that was clearly not to be opened often, if at all. It wasn't labeled. Anyone who walked through a door like _that_ in a place like this without knowing where it led deserved what they got. The orderly slipped his keycard through the reader.

_K-chung_. The bars retracted sullenly into the door. With one hand on her straitjacketed shoulder at all times, the orderly hustled her down the clanging, metal steps, through the little 'airlock' and into her cell. The door slammed shut behind her, almost catching her heels as she stumbled forward.

She turned and glared at the door. Right. Now, how to get back upstairs...

* * *

Some needs were hard-wired into the human brain. Obviously, if your mailing address featured the words 'Arkham Asylum', your wiring was a little faulty to begin with, but some things couldn't be changed even with the force of a class 5 hurricane of psychosis. People were designed to interact with other people up in the sunshine, even if they did think that they were interacting with giant green hedgehogs instead. Being locked away in the windowless basement was just about as far from ideal as anyone could get.

However, it did have one advantage over the upstairs cells. There were no distractions. There was nothing to distract yourself _with_, except the occasional hallucination, so it was an ideal spot to plan an escape. True, escaping from a self-proclaimed high security wing wasn't going to be easy, but then, what ever was?

Sorrow paced her cell in the same pattern that she'd followed for days. It had started with a simple loop around the cell, going round and round in the tiny bit of available floor space like a goldfish in a cereal bowl. Gradually, though, she'd picked up little flourishes, like kicking the toilet as she passed it and jumping onto the bed whenever it intersected her path.

She leaped lightly down from the bed and paced in front of the door, trailing her fingers along the wall. Unexpectedly, her pinky caught on something and protested as she jerked it free.

_Hmm_. She stared pensively at the door handle that had stopped her. It was merely a shallow dent in the door with a small ridge of metal lining one side, providing just enough leverage for a guard to let himself out if the door should happen to swing shut behind him without doing anything so foolish as to leave anything potentially dangerous poking out into the cell.

Then, with a dismissive shake of her bruised hand, she walked on, pretending to ignore the door handle and all of its delicious possibilities. A plan began to ooze into the back of her mind, like a flood rising underneath a loosely framed door. It was simple. It might work.

And if not, well, what was the worst that they could do to her?

* * *

Dinner in the high-security wing was never too exciting. While upstairs, the inmates might be allowed the privilege of silverware, napkins, or even hot food, the luckless downstairs crew would be lucky if their soup hadn't quite iced over by the time it slid into their cells.

Tonight's bill of fare included a grilled cheese sandwich, sliced in halves and dripping with grease, accompanied by a small cup of burned tomato soup and a limp, soggy pickle. Sorrow attacked her tray with gusto, slopping her sandwich into the soup so hard that little waves of red glop sprayed up onto her gloves. The faster she ate, the less she'd have to taste - and so the sandwich disappeared in a few huge bites, followed by one massive swallow that emptied the little cup of soup in record time. The pickle she saved for last, since not even Arkham's cooks could screw up opening a jar. The tangy, salty pickle at least cleared some of the grease off of her teeth.

Then, with a forced look of well-fed satisfaction on her face, she settled back onto her bed and licked her gloves clean like a cat bathing its paws. She sucked on her fingertips, slurping loudly as she encountered a spray of tomato soup between her fingers. Then, with a chorus of slurps and squelches that sounded vaguely like a man wandering through a muddy pasture, she caught a piece of the flimsy latex glove between her teeth and pulled. Her enthusiastic _squnch_ing noises covered the distinctive _snap_ of broken latex as it slapped into her palms. She continued on as if nothing had happened, painstakingly cleaning the last of the horrid soup from the remains of the bright pink gloves.

The slot in her door banged open. "If you're done," an orderly sneered, "hand over your tray." Obediently, she got to her feet and shoved the tray through, smiling briefly as the hatch slammed back into place. She'd gotten away with it. So far, so good...

It was time for part two of the plan. She whirled on her heel and picked up her route around the cell once more. Around and around she walked, as time wore on and the evening turned to night. Six steps to the far wall, kick the toilet, four steps to the bed, jump on the mattress, tightrope-walk to the end of the bed, jump to the corner, two steps and _slap_ the door handle, two more steps and start again. Pace, kick, stomp on the bed, slap the door. Pace, kick, stomp on the bed, slap the door. Pace, kick -

Stomp on the bed and jump up and down and dance like a maniac! She kicked the pillow, sent the blanket flying across the room and did her best to destroy the mattress like a two-year-old on a sugar high.

An orderly fumbled her food-hatch open. "Knock it off," he ordered in a sleepy, irritated voice.

She pointedly stamped on the mattress. "Make me."

"I said _knock it off_."

"I said _make me_!" She stuck her tongue out at him.

"If I have to come in there to stop you," he warned, sleepiness ebbing from his voice, "you're gonna regret it."

"Oh yeah?" She bounced on her mattress again, giggling as she heard a row of stitches pop. "Come and get me, tough guy."

The door swung open to reveal one very red-faced orderly stuffing his cardkey back into his pocket. "_Right_," he snarled. "You little - " He paused.

Sorrow, continuing her imitation of a little kid, dove behind her bed and huddled in on herself. "I'm sorry," she whimpered.

The orderly grunted his satisfaction and turned to leave. Bare, fat fingers slid into the little pocket of a handle on the door, preventing it from trapping him inside.

From Sorrow's perspective, it was rather like watching a melting glacier. The orderly froze, hardly seeming to breathe, and collapsed to the floor as if every joint in his body had turned to mush. She nearly applauded.

Instead, she wriggled out of her hiding spot and tackled the man, one hand jammed in his pocket to retrieve his key while the other smeared a hasty tear or two on the man's pale face. She'd come to the conclusion that killing him was probably a really bad idea. People really _hated_ it when you killed their buddies. Look what had happened when she'd killed one lousy doctor! And so, to save herself some trouble later on, she let the man live.

She darted out of her cell, whipping her newly-acquired key through the slot of the exit door. The heavy metal door obediently clanked open. She bolted through, slamming the door hard behind her and frantically working the key in the next slot.

_Thunk_. The door unlocked, swinging open just wide enough for Sorrow to nip through. She shoved it closed and kicked upward, whipping her rubber-soled foot at the slot for the cardkey. Electronics exploded with a _fizz_ that meant no one would be getting through that door for some time without the help of a master electrician.

She thundered up the stairs, barged through the heavy metal door with all the bars, and raced toward the intake hallway's exit. She'd run down the hall, duck into the storage room for just long enough to retrieve her coat, slip out of the exit and steal a random car from the parking lot. And that plan would have been great, had it not been for the pair of orderlies escorting a trussed-up Scarecrow that suddenly emerged from one of the intake rooms.

Sorrow scrambled backward and sprinted toward the lobby, swearing under her breath as she heard one of them calling an alert on his belt radio. _Shitshitshitshitshit_...The lobby! She'd heard that the doors were always locked, but the receptionist could open them with some kind of button at his desk.

She barreled into the lobby. The night receptionist was cowering under his desk, with nothing visible but the soles of his worn-out dress shoes. Well, that was just _great_. She didn't have time to haul him out and make him press the button for her. The sound of orderlies in hot pursuit thundered in the hallway.

There were no more options. With both arms flung over her face, she raced toward the windows and dove through. Shattered glass pinwheeled into the night sky, sparkling with all the flashing lights of Arkham on alert as the shards tumbled toward the ground. Sorrow hit the cold, frosty ground and rolled, with bits and pieces of glass slicing into her skin as they rained down on her. She staggered to her feet as the orderlies skidded to a halt in front of the broken window.

"Don't move," one ordered.

"You follow me and you're dead," she panted, tearing off her gloves. "You want to live? Stay there." She stumbled into the darkness, picking up the pace as she heard the sounds of a pair of men too stupid to live trying to make their way through a shattered window without slicing their favorite bits off.

The December air was bitingly cold. It slipped through the gashes in her filthy jumpsuit and stung as it hit all of her fresh, bleeding cuts. She was dirty, exhausted, and sweating with exertion. She had nowhere to go, no one to go to, and no idea what she was going to do next.

On the other hand, she was free - free from Arkham, free from the basement, and with some luck, free from the pair of numbskulls trying to track her across bare, frozen ground that accepted no footprints. And right now, that was enough.

(_to be continued_)

* * *

_Author's Note: The high-security wing is roughly based on a cell inhabited by Tommy Silverstein for twenty years in Leavenworth and on general conditions at ADX Florence in Colorado. _

_I deeply apologize for the delay in posting this chapter. I spent three months sleeping, courtesy of my little fetus, and it's taken a long time to get back into the swing of things. Once again, sorry!_


	3. Getting In Trouble

Breaking out of jail is hard. It's _supposed_ to be. Any jail that would let its population wander willy-nilly out of the gates is a jail that would soon see its gates shut for good. Therefore, jails are rigged up with barbed wire and electric fences and all sorts of neat devices that would make the Marquis de Sade's eyes glaze over with possessive awe.

Things are a little different in the land of the criminally insane. By definition, it's not the inmate's _fault_ that they went on a murderous rampage of chihuahua torture. It's entirely the fault of the bubbling chemical stew that makes up their brains. Logically, then, the purpose of an asylum shouldn't be to merely keep these people penned up, but to fix whatever's wrong with them so that they can be proudly released back into society. It makes sense that there might be a little less barbed wire in such places. After all, surely _some_ of them were getting better...right?

Arkham Asylum did indeed go lightly with their security measures. There were quite a few good reasons, most of which involved their lack of money, time, and resources. (The not-quite-so-good reasons, which no one ever talked about, involved a heavy amount of bribery and a fair bit of threats. The rogues _liked_ being able to stroll back out at any time they pleased.) In fact, if you had to escape from any institution, you'd probably want it to be Arkham.

Getting out of the building, however, was just the beginning. Dodging guards and picking locks were the easy bits. The tricky part of the escape started just as the escapee found himself standing in the fresh air on the fun side of the fence.

In most cities, it might be enough just to make it back to civilization. But Gotham, unlike most cities, was _massive_. A seventeen-mile by seventeen-mile bit of land housed a population of well over eight million inhabitants, all of whom would be more than eager to call the cops on anyone wearing anything that looked remotely like an Arkham uniform. How was it possible for newly escaped rogues to travel through miles of city, remaining unseen until they could sneakily disappear into a hidden lair?

Simple. Like everyone else in Gotham, they took the subway.

The Gotham City subway had a station located handily on the north tip of the city itself. On the surface, it was an average station, with security cameras, guards, and other well-known security measures stuffed into every available corner. However, there was a secret behind all of this security: none of it worked. The cameras weren't hooked into a security station, the guards were alcoholics thrilled at a chance to drink and sleep and get paid for it, and the iron grate over the turnstile had a loose bar that would permit free entry.

Some people might say that you couldn't plan a station that badly. And yet, some people are quite unaware of the dramatic improvement in customer service when the manager wakes up at four in the morning to find a theme weapon shoved in their face. After a very brief and sycophantic conversation, the bargain was agreed upon: the rogues would have easy access to the subway and the subway manager would be able to keep breathing. It was, one might say, the deal of a lifetime. And, of course, what one rogue knew, the others quickly found out about, thanks to their shared pools of henchmen and the secret-spewing qualities of many psychiatric medications.

A southbound train screeched to a halt in St. Andrew's Station. The doors slid open with a _bing-bong_, squeaking as they rolled over badly serviced mechanisms in the doorframe. And then, alone on the exhaust-choked platform, Sorrow stepped out of the train.

Jumping through the window head-first hadn't been one of her smarter ideas. She padded, wincing, toward the stairs, head thumping with the dull ache of a body part that's been rammed into something unyielding under severe protest. Little sparkles of broken glass, like snowflakes, were tangled in her hair. Larger chunks of broken glass had slashed into her jumpsuit on their way to the ground, leaving flapping cloth and the occasional deep gash in their wake. And, to top it all off, she was limping from a slightly twisted ankle thanks to the uneven terrain that lay between Arkham and the subway station. On the brighter side, she looked like a person who desperately needed help - and nothing dropped you below the average Gothamite's radar like looking needy. Provided that no one noticed the occasional ARKHAM stenciled onto her clothes, she'd be okay.

She trudged up the stairs. Last time, she'd called her henchmen right away and they'd swung immediately into action, finding her a place to live, clothes to wear, and anything she could ever dream of wanting. This time, though, she had nothing for them to do. There was no goal - no robbery, no heist, no murder - in fact, her only goal was to stay out of Arkham, and she didn't need henchmen for that. Come to think of it, it'd be easier to do that _without_ henchmen.

The stairs led up to the street between two short, graffiti-encrusted walls. Sorrow cautiously peeped over the wall, checking for any signs of life on the grubby, dark street. A lump of rags bulged as its occupant rolled over, looking for a more comfortable position to sleep. Other than that, the street was empty. Sorrow stepped up onto the street and, shivering as the wind wrapped around her shoulders, trotted into the darkness.

She'd come here for a reason. Admittedly, it wasn't the _best_ of reasons - she didn't really have a destination in mind, after all - but it was her best option for now. Her one and only lair, the warehouse, was a good mile and a half from here, and it was sure to be watched by either a cop or a cape. Since she couldn't go to the warehouse, she'd come here, to this dilapadated nest of old factories and empty buildings that housed the Iceberg Lounge in their depths like a slightly rotten egg. The cops didn't come to this part of the city - or if they did, they cruised quietly along with their lights off and prayed not to be noticed. The people infesting these buildings were very eager to display just how much they hated anyone in uniform.

She hurried through the abandoned streets, stepping briskly over empty liquor bottles and scraps of old newspapers. Abruptly, with a pair of screams that sounded like infants on a roller coaster, a pair of furry things that might have been cats shot out from the nearest alley, doing their best to swipe each other's heads off as they barreled into the street. Sorrow ducked backward to avoid the spinning ball of yowling fur. One of her cheap shoes, battered from a long night of kicking nearly everything that stood in her way, caught on a jagged edge of broken sidewalk and promptly disintegrated with a loud _rrrrip_! She stumbled to the left, swearing as the sole of her shoe parted from the scrap of canvas holding it in place.

_WhizzzzzzzzzzzTHUNK_! Something small, black, and round sailed out of the darkness and _pock_ed hard into the asphalt, bouncing heavily into the midst of the domesticated deathmatch. Gas hissed into the air, and two suddenly exhausted cats fell sound asleep in the middle of the road.

Not that Sorrow had stuck around to see it. Little black things whirring through the air generally meant one thing in this town: someone in a costume was after you. The instant that the little metal ball had whacked into the ground, Sorrow was off and running like a groupie who's just spotten an unguarded stage door.

The wind swirled her long hair into her face, blinding her as she skidded around a corner. She swore and scraped it away, leaving a long black smear across her face, and got her vision back just in time to hopscotch over a series of sleeping bums.

Who was tracking her? Obviously it was a Bat - no cop would chuck custom-made metal things at a criminal when they could just as easily shoot them. But which one? The odds of getting away from any of them were slim, but if it was Batman up there...No, it wasn't Batman. _He_ wouldn't have missed.

An old, tattered garbage bag lay almost invisibly in the road, covered with a layer of rotting leaves and general muck. As Sorrow's bare foot came down on it, it slipped away, landing a few feet away with a sickly squelching noise. Her arms pinwheeled wildly as she fought to stay upright. She ran onward, looking somewhat like a malfunctioning robot as she tried to simultaneously stay upright and scrape goo from the sole of her foot. Where to go?

Ah! A storage yard, with no buildings to grapple from! She dove between the slats of the worn-out fence, wincing as splinters raked down her legs. Then, with wobbly knees, she got to her feet and ducked into the warren of storage containers.

A cape flapped noisily as the vigilante descended to street level. Okay, so...not Nightwing, then. One wide blue eye in a field of filth peeked around the corner of the rusty metal storage container. With a light leap, the vigilante sprang over the fence and instantly lowered himself into a crouching position.

Robin! Well, that was a relief. She ducked deeper into the maze, trotting quietly in a zigzag pattern toward the opposite end of the lot.

A forgotten, rusted door handle topped a pile of general debris. Sorrow picked it up and chucked it into the air, watching it rocket down a passageway until it hit a storage container with a reverberating _clangangangangang_.

Soft, barely audible footsteps drummed in the air as Robin obediently trotted in the direction of the noise. From all the blustering, bragging stories told by the other rogues, Sorrow was pretty certain that she knew why. The sudden, loud noise in the middle of a hide-and-seek chase generally meant one of two things: either the rogue was luring the vigilante to his elaborate trap, or, more commonly, the loud noise in question was the elaborate trap breaking at the crucial moment. Either way, the vigilante response was straightforward - go to the source of the noise and punch the offender's face in.

And, of course, this would have been the ideal thing for him to do, if only Sorrow had had an elaborate trap. Unfortunately for Robin, Sorrow's only plan involved running away, which she did the very instant that he slipped out of sight in the clustered ranks of storage containers.

There was no _time_ to find a good hiding spot. She needed to go somewhere _now_! It had to be safe, and easy to get to, and...an idea struck her. She skidded to a halt, spun around, and raced in the opposite direction.

Sometimes, you want to go where everybody knows your name. And, most often, people tend to prefer places where everyone that knows their name isn't immediately inclined to bark orders like 'Hands up!' or 'Stop or I'll shoot!' For the rogues, there was only one place that fit that description - and fortunately for Sorrow, it was within easy running distance.

* * *

The Iceberg Lounge was _the_ place to be in Gotham. Well, except for weeknights. Holidays, too, found the place pretty deserted, since very few families wanted to spend quality time together at a club patronized by Gotham's most infamous. And then, of course, there were so many other places to go on the weekends, places where you _weren't_ likely to get shot in the head for unwittingly mocking the object of someone's obsessions...In fact, the only ones who considered the Iceberg to be _the_ hot spot were either criminally insane or fantastically stupid.

A velvet rope, looking as if no one had ever touched it in the years it had served as a barrier, hung hopefully next to the entrance of the Iceberg so that the non-existent crowds would have a place to watch the non-existent patrons saunter in for some non-existent fun. Sorrow vaulted the rope with one leap and yanked the glass door open, shoving herself inside and reaching for the next door as -

_Wham_!

She bounced backward and thumped hard against the entryway wall. "Watch where you're going," a voice growled angrily out of the dimly-lit hall. A bifurcated figure loomed out of the darkness, his half-scarred face scrunched in anger as he took in the wreckage of his suit.

Sorrow winced. She'd run head-first into the white half of his suit - of course, it _would_ be the white half, she couldn't have gotten so lucky to run into the black, mostly-destroyed half of it - and a Rorschach blot of mud, blood, and shattered glass splotched him from chest to wrist. Instinctively, she raised a hand to brush the worst of it off for him.

In all the fun and excitement of the running, jumping, and mind-searing panic, she'd forgotten that she'd left her gloves somewhere on the grounds of Arkham. Two-Face, on the other hand, realized it at just about the time that her bare fingertips came into view. He wrenched himself sideways and whipped out a single, shining gun in a movement so well-rehearsed that one might think he threatened to kill people every few minutes.

"Oh! No, I didn't mean...I wasn't going to..." Sorrow protested, jerking her arms upward into the classic I-swear-I-didn't-mean-it jazz hands pose framing her face. Cold glass pressed against the back of her neck. She couldn't open the door to run away without stepping forward, and she couldn't step forward without getting closer to that gun that was _already_ too close to her, and she really didn't want to die tonight...

He considered her for a moment. Then, with his free hand, he slipped his coin from his pocket. It flew into the air with an almost inaudible _ping_. He was making a decision! Oh, no, oh, no...

_Thwup_. Well, bad heads would have meant death, she was pretty certain...what would good heads possibly mean?

He glared at the coin and reluctantly stuffed the gun back into its holster. Then, silently, he looked her over again, noting the shattered glass in her hair, the various scratches and scrapes she'd acquired, and the shredded remains of her Arkham-issued outfit. "How far to your hideout?" he asked wearily.

"Uh...well, the cops are probably watching it..." Sorrow said uneasily.

He shot the coin another dirty look. "Come on, then," he grumbled, slipping the coin back into his pocket.

"Where?"

He rolled his eyes. "Our place. Take it or leave it," he said somewhat hopefully as he noticed her hesitating.

"Oh. Uh...I just wasn't expecting...thanks," she mumbled, falling in beside him. Okay, so it was a place to go, which was good, but...well, death waited on the other side of a coin-flip. Maybe she could find a better place tomorrow..."Wait!" She jabbed a foot into the door, preventing it from swinging open. "Robin's out there!"

Two-Face snorted disdainfully. "The day we run from that brat is the day we turn ourselves in to Arkham."

Well, wasn't that nice. She cautiously followed him into the night, keeping an eye out for approaching yellow capes as she trotted toward his nicely split sedan.

* * *

Many people assume that love makes the world go around. This is incorrect. In actuality, it's _caffeine_ that makes the world go around, delivering energy and pep to people who would much rather stay in bed and let the world worry about itself.

Troy Grey stumbled into Arkham, both hands wrapped around a life-saving paper cup full of coffee. Steam wisped into the air, bathing his face in hot vapor as he took sip after grateful sip of the delicious drink.

After his usual zombie walk to the attic, with the usual lack of greetings from any of the staff as he passed, he sat himself down in his dusty chair and took another long swig of his drink. Slowly, blissfully, the caffeine began dancing in his head, propping his eyelids open and motivating him to get to work on another round of things that no one cared about.

He'd clipped and pasted two entire articles before he realized that something was wrong. Well, maybe not _wrong_, but...different. Things weren't as he had left them. Well, okay, the papers and his tools were all in their normal piles, but...something was new.

_Blink. Blink._ His phone was blinking at him. He blinked back. Why would a little red light be flashing on his phone...he'd gotten a _message_! He fumbled the handset into his hands, almost dropping it in shock. Someone wanted to talk to him? Maybe this was a good thing. Maybe he was finally going to be assigned to some more _real_ work -

The handset hissed into life. "Grey. It's Carlson. Get down here _now_." In the background, a panicky voice whined something urgent. "Yes, I _know_ she escaped," Carlson snapped at the unknown interrupter. His voice got louder as he finished the message. "You've got some questions to answer. Bring your files." _Click_.

Files? He had two whole _cabinets_ full of files. No, he surely didn't mean to bring all of those down. Did he mean his _personal_ files? Well, that was silly, because the only inmate he _had_ personal files about was -

Oh.

_Oh_.

Oh _hell_!

He abandoned his coffee - who needed caffeine when you had a full dose of adrenaline slamming through your system? - and snatched up his files on Sorrow, bounding down the stairs and through the halls like a man being chased by a rabid baboon. He skidded, panting, to a halt at Carlson's open door.

Dr. Carlson waved him in with a short gesture as he snapped irritably into the phone. "No. I don't know where she is. I don't know where she'd be. I'm about to ask. Yes. I will call you back. I will…I will _call you back_, Dr. Lily. Yes. Good-bye." He slammed the phone down into the holder with an annoyed grunt and focused on Troy. "Well?" he asked angrily.

"Well...what?" Troy said, baffled.

"Do you have anything to say about this?" Carlson asked pointedly.

"Oh. Uh...she was unhappy." Carlson's face twitched, just for a moment, into the expression of someone who desperately needed a holiday. Troy shifted his grip on the files, almost dropping them. "I mean, um, she said the basement was...bad, but I've never actually _seen_ it, so I don't know how bad it really was..."

Carlson pinned him with a Look. "Now, Grey. Where is she _now_," he said slowly and patiently.

"Oh. I, uh...her house? Wherever it is? Probably?" he guessed.

Carlson sighed. "Go downstairs," he ordered. "Take pictures of the damage, write up a report, and bring it to the staff meeting. It's at ten," he added when Troy stared blankly at him.

"Sure. Right. Um...sure," Troy agreed, backing out of the office.

* * *

Troy fidgeted nervously as he waited outside of the massive steel door that led to the high-security wing. An electrician, armed with giant leather gloves, was wrist-deep in the shattered control panel that operated the door. He grunted in triumph as something clicked into place, and the door reluctantly swung open.

Troy obediently snapped shots of the damage: the keycard reader, now in multiple pieces on the floor, the sobbing orderly being tended by a hard-faced Arkham nurse, the wild variety of biohazard signs taped hurriedly to the walls around one certain door...

He stepped inside. The place was a mess - blanket and pillow tossed aside, mattress laying askew on the bed frame - but that didn't catch his eye. What he _did_ see was a little tiny room with a little tiny camera that reminded him all too vividly of what a little tiny bastard had done to Sorrow.

He didn't know much - after all, he hadn't been working as anything but an archivist while the whole mess had been happening - but he had picked up enough from police reports, overheard conversations, and even from Teng himself to fill in the more disturbing gaps. In a room in a basement very much like this, he had tied her down and done..._horrible_ things.

The camera clattered, unnoticed, to the ground as he stared at the appalling surroundings. Not only had they put her in this awful, all-too-familiar place, but they hadn't even bothered to _try_ to make it livable. There was no _window_, no social contact, no hope for a better tomorrow...how the _hell_ was this legal? It was like Hannibal Lecter's cell without the charm and whimsy. Why did they even _have_ this basement, where people were obviously just thrown away like so much human garbage?

Sorrow didn't deserve to be thrown away. He scooped up the remains of his camera from the floor and stalked upstairs, fury setting off firestorms behind his eyes.

* * *

Anger is a powerful emotion. In its time, it has leveled cities, destroyed lives, and ruined perfectly good birthday parties. Righteous anger, however, is even _more_ dangerous, since the white-hot fire of anger is being fueled by the blowtorch of Being Right. There is no arguing with righteous fury.

Troy slouched in his chair at the table, glaring at the messy scribble of his report while the other doctors casually discussed their various worries over steamy mugs of coffee. Of course, as always, their worries focused more on themselves than their patients, and for the first time he wondered how a group of people that professed to care so much for other people could be so alarmingly self-centered. Who _cared_ about the price of gas or the rude clerk at the grocery store? Didn't they realize there were more _important_ things to talk about?

Carlson, with a distracted look on his face, waved everyone to their seats. "Good morning. As you all know, Sorrow escaped from the high-security wing last night."

A loud _snap_ echoed through the room as Dr. Lily's nervous fingers squeezed her pencil at just the wrong angle. "Where is she now? Where was she going?"

"We don't know," Carlson said, with a little spin on the word _we_ that meant _not me, but _him.

Lily dropped her broken pencil. "Great! Just great. Well, I hope you've got enough in the budget for a bodyguard, because now she's loose and I'm _next_."

"What?" Troy said, baffled. "What do you mean, you're _next_?"

"Don't be stupid," she snapped. "She kills her doctors. _I_ was her doctor -"

"That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard," he snapped, fury pulsing in his head. "She's not out to kill you!"

"Why else would she escape?" Lily demanded.

Troy bit back a snort of disbelief. Yes, why would _anyone_ want to escape from a little, damp, cold, windowless room, where they maybe got to have a partial conversation once a week if they were lucky? Who _wouldn't_ want to live in luxurious surroundings like those? (Besides the occasional hermit, that is.) "She didn't like it down there," he said coldly.

"Obviously," Dr. Lucas snorted. "Look, we're all aware of what she's going to do. One of us is going to wake up and find _her_ standing there - "

"That's totally ridiculous!" Troy blurted, dropping his pen on the table. "She only killed Teng because he hurt her. You can't seriously believe that she'd care for one minute about any of you!" He darted a pleading glance around the table. No one said a word. "She didn't kill the orderly," he pointed out desperately.

"Yes...and we need to know _why_ she didn't."

"BECAUSE SHE'S NOT TRYING TO KILL US!" The entire table jerked backward like a set of puppets on sharply tugged strings. Troy, infuriated, didn't notice. "I _told_ you to let her out of the basement," he snarled. "I _told_ you that if you would just let her back upstairs, she'd be okay. She just needs some therapy, and -"

"And someone to turn the key for her?" someone muttered nastily, just loud enough to be audible.

"What?" Troy blinked. "What do you mean?"

Carlson looked levelly at him. "The orderly in charge of fetching Sorrow told us about your...hmm...conversation." Troy stared blankly back at him. "You told her to escape," Carlson explained.

"I did _not_!" Troy yelped. The circle of faces around him mirrored their own mixes of disapproval and...and _empathy_? No. No, he had to be imagining that. No one would be looking like _that_...as if he was the unlucky one who'd been caught out of the entire group of them. That was ridiculous! Doctors didn't let their patients out! Doctors _cared_ for their patients, and did their best to _help _them...

...or did they? Sorrow had told him that they took bribes - and come to think of it, there had been a lot of meaningful glances in these post-escape meetings before. Maybe they _did_ take bribes. Yes, that would explain quite a bit, wouldn't it - the Riddler being allowed crosswords, the Scarecrow being allowed his horror movies, why the Joker and Harley Quinn ended up in the same rec room on times too numerous to count...

They weren't trying to help the rogues! They were only trying to help their bank accounts. Well, he wasn't going to take any flak from anyone who would take a bribe to make the _Joker's_ life easier!

"I didn't tell her to escape," he said firmly, ignoring the others as they muttered their disbelief.

Carlson glanced at his papers for a moment. "Hmm," he said quietly. "So tell me...what do you think we should do with her when she comes back?"

Somehow, this didn't seem like the right time to mention that she'd probably cheerfully burn Gotham to the ground if it meant never coming back here. "I'd bring her back upstairs, with the others," he said promptly. "And I'd reinstate daily therapy, for a start."

Carlson nodded. "I see." He set his pencil down. "In fact, I see too well. You've gotten too attached to her, Grey."

"I have _not_!" Troy protested, horrified.

Carlson rolled his eyes. "Look at yourself. You're sweating. You're angry. Your eye keeps twitching." He sighed as Troy pressed his rebellious eyelid down with an aggravatingly damp hand. "You're just not ready for this kind of a responsibility. Maybe in a few more months, you can try again with someone else...but for now, you can go back to the archives."

Troy stared open-mouthed at him. "You don't understand!" he wailed, scrabbling for his notes. "If you just listen to what I have to say - "

"I have," Carlson said flatly. "This is what's best for both of you. Now, sit down before you do something that you'll regret." Troy gaped at him like a newly caught fish. "Sit _down_," Carlson repeated, gesturing to his vacated chair.

Troy felt his legs fold obediently beneath him. Dammit, he thought miserably. How could this have happened?

"Are there any other suggestions for when she returns?" Carlson asked, pointedly excluding him from the rest of the conversation.

"Keep her in the basement, first of all," Dr. Lucas sniffed. "And put some better men down there to watch her! If she got out once, she's clearly not to be trusted."

"And taking her to therapy seems too dangerous," Dr. Torres chimed in. "Perhaps her...new therapist, whoever it is, should go down there and speak to her through the door?" Humiliated rage burned through Troy like a wildfire ripping through a field of magnesium.

"Or not at all," Dr. Palmer corrected. "After all, she's obviously not interested in getting better."

"And perhaps we could remake those gloves?" Dr. Lucas suggested. "You know, the ones that locked onto her hands?"

Troy's fury burned cold as a shot of fear skated up his spine. If they were willing to use Teng's methods...if they were willing to break her just to keep themselves safe...these weren't doctors. These men and women didn't deserve to wear those white coats that told the world that they were healers of the mind. They weren't healers. They were _monsters_.

"I hope she does come after you," he growled, raising his eyes to see the entire room full of medical professionals turn questioningly to him. "I hope she hunts you all down and...and..." He couldn't think of a proper threat, mostly because he knew in his soul that she would never track them down like that to hurt them. "Have you listened to yourselves? What is _wrong_ with you?" he burst out, slapping an open hand down onto the table. "You can't treat people this way!"

"Careful, lad," Dr. Baldwin warned softly.

Troy ignored him. What was there to be careful about? He could never see Sorrow again! He couldn't even try to help _anyone_ for months yet, maybe not ever, and all he had to look forward to was a lifetime of cutting out articles and pasting them in files that would never get read. "You're just as bad as _they_ are," he accused. "The criminals, the..._rogues_...you use people and you hurt people and you don't care, you don't care _one bit_ about helping anyone, you just care about your stupid paychecks and your bribes and your...you disgust me!"

"You're not seriously going to let him talk to _us_ this way, are you?" Dr. Lucas asked Carlson, incredulous.

"Troy, go to my office," Carlson instructed wearily. "We need to have a long talk about your future here."

"Oh yeah?" Troy snarled, shooting to his feet. "I'll summarize it for you." He snatched up his notes, tore them in half, and threw them across the table. Scribbly golden paper showered down like oversized confetti. "I quit."

And with that, ex-Dr. Grey slammed out of a staff meeting for the last time.

* * *

Quitting his job in a blaze of fury had felt magnificent. Stomping upstairs and throwing his few belongings into a box had felt slightly less magnificent, though, and as that righteous anger drained out of him and reality kicked in he felt just about as magnificent as a pile of squashed jelly beans.

Troy threw the small box of his belongings into the passenger side of his car and took off down the long road away from Arkham Asylum. A little teddy bear fell out of the box and hit the floor as he sped around one of the winding curves in the road.

What had he _done_?

Oh, he knew perfectly well what he had done. He'd thrown away his job, his career, and his reputation all for the sake of a woman who might not care if he was hit by a truck tomorrow. Brilliant. Great. Maybe he could find something else intelligent to do with the rest of his day, like shooting cop cars with paintballs or hand-feeding sharks.

What the _hell_ was he supposed to do now? He had no job, no money, and no idea where Sorrow was. He pulled over to the roadside and buried his face in his hands, taking a deep breath to try and calm himself. He _had_ to find her. If she went back to Arkham without knowing what they were going to do...he _couldn't_ let that happen to her. No, there had to be some way to keep her safe. First, though, he'd have to find her.

How the _hell_ was he going to do that? Deep breaths. Okay. Okay. She was on foot, so she must be in the city. There was nowhere else to go for at least a twenty-mile radius. She'd have reached a hideout by now, but where? She was friendly with Nygma, Quinn and Isley - maybe she was staying with one of them? But how could he find _them_...and more to the point, did he really want to track down a rogue when he wasn't absolutely certain that she'd be there too?

Suddenly, he realized where she almost certainly had gone.

There was only one way to find her. He rolled back onto the road and made his way to the nearest theatrical shop.

(_to be continued_)


	4. Getting In Deeper

Appearances are vitally important. Anyone from the most pre-eminent social psychologist to Hyacinth Bucket will tell you that keeping up appearances is the only way to get people to treat you as you want to be treated.

Troy Grey knew this and knew it well. Admittedly, actually putting the knowledge into practice was an ability that he sorely lacked. It was all well and good to look like an up-and-coming doctor in his official white coat. Without that official-sounding confidence to back him up, though, he may as well have been a child playing dress-up.

Of course, since he _wasn't_ an up-and-coming doctor anymore - since, in fact, he'd exited his employment at Arkham Asylum with as much grace and decorum as the average nuclear explosion - that white coat wasn't going to come in useful any time soon. In fact, thanks to his little temper tantrum in the staff meeting, he was fairly certain that no-one in Gotham was ever going to hire him again, unless the job's most demanding requirement was the ability to inquire of customers whether they'd like fries with that. There was only one thing left to do before he shelved his entire career.

He had to find Sorrow.

It was bad enough that the doctors at Arkham were planning to unleash all sorts of revoltingly overdone security measures. It was even worse that all of these measures would be directed solely at Sorrow. But worst of all, it was _his fault_. How could it not be? He had been there, he had had the chance to talk them out of it, and he had failed.

Well, he wasn't going to fail her again. He'd find her, and let her know how much danger she was in, and then...well, he'd have to come up with a suitable _and then_ after he was done broiling in self-loathing.

But for now, thanks to his somewhat overgrown sense of duty, he was sitting alone at the main bar of the Iceberg Lounge in the middle of the afternoon. Everyone that worked in Arkham knew that it was where the rogues hung out. Even the news articles occasionally name-checked it, mostly in sentences containing the polite newspaper euphemisms for 'horrific violence' and 'alcohol-fueled insanity'. Troy was willing to bet that, had he shown up in his starchy white lab coat and dangly plastic nametag, he would have been on his way to the emergency room within minutes of stepping inside.

Of course, since he _wasn't_ in his work clothes - since, in fact, he'd traded in his lab coat for a blue greatcoat and smeared his face with greasy grey makeup - no one had given him a second glance when he'd timidly crept into the bar. The long blue coat twisted uncomfortably around his legs as he perched on his barstool. He felt absolutely ridiculous.

"Hey," the bartender grunted. Troy blinked in mute panic. "You want a drink?"

"Er...um...a Coke?" he suggested.

"A Coke," the bartender repeated flatly.

"Yeah. I'm, um...waiting for someone," he invented madly.

The bartender scowlingly shoved a glass full of fizzy liquid his way. His scowl disappeared as Troy carefully paid him twice what the drink was really worth. Troy searched his memory for some bar lingo. "Keep them coming," he instructed.

The bartender shrugged. "Whatever you say," he muttered as he sauntered away.

The plan had been to sit and wait for someone who looked...well, _rogue-like_ to come in, recognize who he was supposed to look like, and tell him where to find Sorrow. Admittedly, the plan had some flaws - who went to the bar in midday? What rogue was even _awake_ before the sun went down? - but he was reasonably confident that someone might tell him. Maybe a henchman would wander in for a drink before showing up for work. Maybe one of the staff members would happen by and give him some information. (He knew how this sort of thing worked. He'd seen movies, after all, and his pocket was stuffed with twenties in order to bribe anyone who might need it. Actually _offering_ the bribe might be tricky, since he'd never done such a thing before, but maybe the money would smooth over any...awkwardness.) Yes, maybe he could get an answer sooner or later...

Cheerful footsteps skittered across the floor. Troy immediately turned to his drink, eyes down, and tried to shrink into his coat. Of all the maybes he'd considered, he hadn't once thought that _maybe _miss Harley Quinn herself would skip up to the bar and seat herself next to him. He'd wanted a rogue to talk to, _yes_, and someone who actually knew Sorrow was a bonus...but did it have to be the one that hung around with the Joker? Why couldn't it have been someone marginally safe, like the Ventriloquist?

"Hey Pete!" Quinn chirped as she plonked herself down on the barstool. "Glass a water an' a Jean Harlow, please."

A _what_? Troy, with his face firmly tilted downward, looked up through his eyelashes at the bartender as he disappeared into a cunningly concealed doorway in the bar's faux-ice exterior. The man returned with a long, thin black bag draped over one arm and carefully handed it across the bartop to the lady in the dull grey jumpsuit.

Harley squeaked excitedly and unzipped it. Black and red fabric spilled exuberantly out as a double-horned hat jingled to a halt perilously close to Troy's Coke.

"Sorry," she chirped, sweeping her costume into a pile in front of her.

It was now or never. He had to talk to _someone_, and Harley was the only possibility. "S-slipping into something more comfortable?" he stammered nervously.

"S'right!" Harley beamed. "Hey Pete, no ice in that water! It's _freezing_ out!" she complained, examining a clump of melting snow on her pant cuff.

"Just break out?" Troy asked as casually as possible, painfully aware that she wouldn't be out and about in an Arkham jumpsuit if she'd gotten out legally.

"Well, not so much _break_ as _bribe_," Harley giggled. "You slip a coupla grand to Doc Lucas and he's putty in yer hands."

Lucas? _Lucas?!_ That smug, superior, holier-than-thou _asshole_ had let _Harley Quinn_ out and he'd had the _nerve_ to look down on _him_ when he hadn't done _anything wrong_! The sheer hypocrisy of the man almost gave Troy an aneurysm right there. "That _jackass_!" he snarled.

Harley looked at him curiously. Oh, _shit_, he'd said it aloud. "You got a problem with that?" she inquired.

"Not with you," he amended hastily. "No, it's just...he..." Why _wouldn't_ a rogue want a doctor to be bribable?

Harley was apparently asking herself the same question. Her eyes narrowed as she studied his face under the thick, hastily-smeared makeup. "You look familiar..." she accused.

"No! Um, no, I'm not-"

"You're that doc at Arkham!" she said, happy to have identified him. Her smile quickly turned into a frown. "What're you doin' _here_?"

"I was just...um..."

"And what's with the costume? When they say get in yer patient's head, they don't mean like this," Harley pointed out.

"No, I know. I just..." Troy gave up all hope of having this charade ever work. "Where's Sorrow?"

"You think I'll tell you so you can take her back to Arkham? Not a chance, kiddo."

"_No_!" he said vehemently. "I..." He raked a hand through his hair, not noticing the wide grey streaks of makeup that were left behind. "I don't work at Arkham anymore. I quit! I quit my job, and I bought this costume, and...I just need to find Sorrow," he said desperately.

He could almost see the wheels turning in Harley's head. He'd quit his job and purchased a costume, which added up to true love in costumed form. Fine. Let her believe it for long enough for him to warn Sorrow about the doctors, and then he could go home and start wishing that he'd never been born.

"Well, why didn't ya _say_ so?" Harley demanded, grinning. "We gotta get you an' yer new boss back together, pronto!"

New boss? "No, I'm not..." _Shut up! _ his brain screamed. _If she thinks you're her henchman, she'll take you to her, and then this nightmare can be over_! "...um, I'm not _officially_ her, uh, henchman yet," he mumbled.

"You got a name?"

"Uh...Troy?" he said, confused.

"Not a _name_," she said, exasperated. "A _name_. Ya can't be a henchman without a name!" She picked up her hat and jingled its tassels at him. "Get thinkin'! I'll be back after I change." And with that, she was gone in a cartwheeling blur.

A name. Oh, a _villain_ name. Right. He took a drink of his Coke. Well, Harley had just chopped bits off of her name...but his name was hardly long enough to do that. Could he just go by Grey? No, no, it needed to be something _allied_ with Sorrow. The Joker had his Harlequin. The Riddler had his Query. The Mad Hatter had his Alice. And Sorrow had...had _what? _Sadness? Depression? The Suicide Squad? No. Good grief, he was being so _stupid_ today…

He paused. Grief. Sorrow and Grief. That just might work! It's not like it had to be a _perfect _name. He was only using it to make Harley happy, after all. He'd just wait for her to come back and lead him to Sorrow, and everything would work out all right.

Troy had had many gaps in his education. One of the most serious omissions was this: nothing in Gotham _ever_ works out all right.

* * *

Rogues did not take well to the concept of cooperation. _If there is loot to be had_, they point out, _surely it should be mine. Why should I allow anyone to interfere with my own brilliant schemes_? But then, life was not always so easy. Sometimes, the perfect plan required a hint of mind control, or perhaps a soupcon of sparky electrical death. When it came right down to it, the rogues would grudgingly work together, if there was a large enough payoff in the end.

But you cannot work with someone that you cannot find. And so the Penguin, in all his criminal cunning, had put together a makeshift phone directory stashed behind a loose panel in the old-fashioned phone booth near the bathrooms. (The Riddler, in a somewhat more lucrative use of his skills, had provided each rogue with their very own cell phone, fully outfitted with a delightful bit of techno-wizardry that allowed them to travel freely about the city without attracting any caped attention. They, in turn, had provided him with enough money to pay his rent for a year, if he actually bothered about rent, which he didn't.)

Harley, freshly dressed in her jestery glory, pried the guide loose with practiced fingers and skimmed through the entries. Who was out? Who would know where Sorrow was? And, more importantly, who might have some spare weaponry around so that she could destroy the bits of Arkham that were inconveniently placed between her and her Puddin'?

"An' the winner is...Red!" she beamed, dialing the number with practiced ease.

On the fifth ring, Ivy finally answered. "Hello?" she snapped into the phone.

"Hey Red! How's it goin'?"

"Harley," said a much warmer tone of voice. "How long have you been out?"

"Coupla hours. I'm down at the 'Berg - wanna come say hi?"

There was a distinctly long pause at the other end of the line. "I'm...busy," Ivy said uncomfortably.

"Got a visitor, huh? Is it Sorrow? 'Cuz I'm lookin' for her," Harley said, a little hurt that her bestest-ever pal would give her the brushoff.

"No, I haven't seen her," Ivy answered. "No one's here, Harls. I'm just...busy. You can come here, if you want," she offered.

"Dunno, Red. I might be..._busy_," she shrugged.

"I didn't mean it like _that_," Ivy said, exasperated. Something in the background rattled ominously. "I've got to go!" _Click_.

Harley blew a raspberry at the phone and hung up. Fine. She'd just find Sorrow herself. Who else was out...who else was out...the paper said Crane was free, but she knew for a fact that he was still locked up in the infirmary. Good. She didn't really want to call him anyway.

Harvey! She didn't even need to look at the phone list to call _him_. 222-2222. It rang once, twice -

"Hello?"

"Hey, Twofers! You seen Sorrow lately?"

There was a muffled sound, as if the phone had been tossed across the room to someone else, and a crackle of static as the phone was raised to a different mouth.

"Hello?"

"Sorrow!" Harley chirped delightedly. "Found ya!"

"Harley? How'd you know I was here?"

"Lucky guess. Hey, you doin' anything? Girls' night at the bar!" Harley said temptingly.

"I can't," Sorrow said regretfully. "I just broke out last night, and my stuff's all the way across town."

"What if I brought ya yer costume?" Harley wheedled.

Sorrow audibly perked up. "Throw in a first-aid kit and you've got yourself a deal!"

"Be there in half a jiff!" Harley hung the ancient phone up with a triumphant grin. She stuffed the bit of paper back behind the loose wall and pressed it shut. Then, with a blown kiss at her reflection in the glass for luck, she slipped out of the booth.

With a hop, skip, and a flip, she skated into place next to Troy at the bar. "Found her!" she announced triumphantly.

He grinned, his teeth showing whitely between his grey lips. "You did? Where is she?"

"Hold up there, Troy-boy." She examined him closely. "You got a name yet?"

He shrugged. "Grief," he muttered, somewhat embarrassed.

"Could work," she nodded. "So anyway, I'm gonna go get her, and we'll be back for ya!"

"Couldn't I just...follow you or something?" he asked desperately.

"Sorry kiddo! No boys allowed!" She wiggled her fingers at him in a cheerful farewell and skipped out of the Iceberg.

* * *

The night before, Two-Face had offered Sorrow a place to stay. Rather, his _coin_ had offered it to her, a distinction that both of them were very pointedly remembering as they entered his current, somewhat dilapidated abode.

After so many years in the business, Two-Face had run out of classy addresses that featured the number 2. 22 2nd Street, possibly his favorite address, had been torn down and turned into a parking garage before he'd even had the chance to threaten his way into occupancy. In fact, there were hardly any 2 addresses left in the city that hadn't been demolished, renumbered, renamed, or secured beyond any hope of getting in without drawing obscene amounts of attention.

After his last lair had been discovered and subsequently destroyed by the police, he'd begrudgingly moved his operations to 10 Motzkin Street. (As the saying went, there were 10 types of people in the world: those that understood binary, and those that did not. Post-acid Harvey Dent was a devout supporter of it, needless to say.)

Motzkin Street had a reputation for being, in polite terms, a shithole. Two-Face's lair wasn't much better than the half-ruined warehouses and crumbling buildings that surrounded it. Someone, presumably his henchgirls, had done their best with the inside, transforming half of it into something that was merely as bad as the average frat house in terms of disgusting filth. The other side was a fabulous display of every retch-inducing example of bad housekeeping that had ever appeared on reality television.

Roaches, too fat to bother running from the light, lounged indolently on beds of rotting newspapers. Various dents in the rubble near abandoned shopping carts testified to the building's former use as an unofficial homeless shelter, while various smells from dark corners testified that they hadn't bothered much with plumbing.

Sorrow edged away from an inquisitive spider. "Nice place."

"It's temporary," Two-Face grumbled. "We'll be out of here after the heist tomorrow. There's some spare clothes in the girls' room back there." He waved half-heartedly at the doorway leading out of the cleaner half of the room. "We'll be..." the coin flew into the air and landed scarred-side up. He visibly bit back a curse. "We'll be over here," he muttered, wading through the debris on the messy side and disappearing through a door. A resounding _slam_ was probably his way of saying 'good night'. She had merely taken enough time to find a blanket and roll herself into it on the floor of the henchgirl's bedroom before she fell fast asleep.

Two-Face had spent the day killing cockroaches and planning that night's heist on a well-worn legal pad. Sorrow had chosen to spend her morning picking glass out of her face. Eventually, with nothing better to do, she had given up playing doctor and turned to doing her bit to pay Two-Face back for her accommodations by continuing to clean the half-scrubbed mess on the good side of the lair. They hadn't spoken more than a few words to one another until her very brief phone conversation with Harley.

"You're leaving?" he asked, pretending not to notice the large cockroach scuttling across his foot. Sorrow nodded, gaze fixed to the enormous insect. Dent returned to his plans. "Good."

A very large group of henchmen had shown up not two minutes after the call. After Dent had shouted at the group for being late, being unarmed and (the greatest sin) being odd-numbered, he'd shot the last one to come in the door. The rest had scurried in and out in pairs for half of a very frenzied hour, hauling guns and ammunition from hidey-holes that were almost invisible under their layers of muck. After the whirlwind of activity had ceased, and the men had left, Sorrow kicked a layer of old newspapers over the new corpse and settled down to wait for Harley.

She didn't have to wait long. The jester burst in through the main doors of the building as if all the hounds of hell were hot on her heels. A black garment bag flapped in her hand as she whipped it through the air. "Cops!" she explained, bouncing over the detritus and scurrying toward the back door.

Sorrow rolled to her feet and pelted after her. "How many?" she gasped.

"Dunno! Does it matter?"

"FREEZE! POLICE!" The sound of breaking wood behind them was definitely the cops kicking down the door. The unfortunate squishy sound that immediately followed was most likely the cops discovering the fresh corpse. From the amount of swearing that accompanied it, they had probably found it with the front of their uniforms.

"Here!" Sorrow hissed, yanking Harley through a half-rotted door. They tumbled onto the street and immediately kicked into an all-out run, dodging bums and garbage as they ran.

"Stop!" came a wheezy wail from behind them. "I said _stop.._.or I'll....shoot!"

"Cops in this town have no stamina," Harley grinned as they hurdled a tipped-over garbage can. "Two more minutes and we're free an' clear!"

A cop car screamed down the road toward them. They immediately ducked into a narrow alley and sprinted away. "Or not. Oh well, time for plan B!" Harley cartwheeled into the road and drew her popgun, aiming it directly in front of her at an unimpressed-looking taxi driver. "TAXI!" she chirped merrily. He skidded to a halt, his front bumper almost clipping her knees as she turned a neat flip in the air and landed on his hood.

Sorrow threw herself into the backseat. Harley, with a few more unnecessary gymnastics, stuffed herself into the other side of the car. The original passenger, a businessman, clutched a stack of reports to his chest as he realized just who had interrupted his ride. "Get out," the driver growled. "I already _got_ fare."

"You new in town?" Harley asked pleasantly.

"Yeah. So?" He scowled darkly at her.

Harley beamed at the suddenly sweaty businessman in the three-piece suit that was sharing the backseat. "You wouldn't mind sharing a cab, would ya, sweetie?"

"S-sure. No problem," he nodded, gaze glued to her popgun. "Just...just _drive_, okay? Just do what they want!"

A stream of foreign grumbles emanated from the front seat as the driver shifted gears. In defiance of the laws of physics, the little yellow cab suddenly appeared to be doing Mach 2 down the street.

"Here's yer stuff," Harley said, handing over the garment bag.

"Thanks," Sorrow said, immediately pawing out a pair of gloves and slipping them on. The businessman quivered at a much more respectable seven on the Richter scale as he realized that the two women crowded in around him weren't interested in killing him.

Nothing had ever felt quite as nice as feeling that big warm coat wrap comfortingly around her shoulders. "Did you have any trouble finding my stuff?" she asked, doing up the buttons down her front.

"Nah. Well, a little," Harley confessed, resting her crossed legs comfortably on the rigid man's lap. "The cops were still watching yer place, so I had to go in through the roof. Y'know, you should - "

"Where you girls going?" snapped the cranky driver. "You going with him?"

"Nah. There's a greenhouse on the west end of town, over where Collins turns into Brookview." She patted the terrified man on the cheek. "I'm sure you won't mind covering our tab, will you, sweetie?"

"No! No, no, I'll pay," he nodded. "Whatever you want!"

Harley smiled and tweaked his nose. "An' they say chivalry is dead. So anyway, S, I was thinkin' about how you could redecorate..."

* * *

The greenhouse was dark. A small tin-plated building resting against the glass wall glowed with a dim orange light through the cracks where the plates had shifted away from one another. For some reason, an enormous hole had been punched into the corrugated tin that formed the building's makeshift roof.

"See ya around, sport!" Harley called after the driver of the cab, who took off without looking back. "Friendly guy, huh?"

"Yeah. Great," Sorrow muttered, shivering deeper into her coat as they trudged through knee-high snow drifts toward the greenhouse's door.

Harley handsprung ahead and rapped on the door with both hands. "Iiiiiiiiiiiiivy! Knock knock!"

"Who's there?" came Ivy's voice, weary of the joke.

"Ike 'n' Harley."

"Ike 'n' Harley who?"

"Ike 'n' Harley believe you haven't let us in yet!" The door opened slowly to reveal a very tired Poison Ivy leaning against the doorframe. "Come on in, Harls..." She blinked, slowly registering that Harley was not alone. "Oh. Sorrow. Come in," she invited listlessly, waving them in with one hand while the other maintained its deathgrip on the doorframe.

"Hey, Red, you don't look so good," Harley said, unofficially entering the running for Most Obvious Statement Of The Year. "What's up?"

"Nothing," Ivy snapped irritably. "I'm just a little tired, that's all." She stumbled inside, sprawling in a convenient nest of vines as Harley and Sorrow brushed the snow off of their coats.

The little tin building was obviously Ivy's workshop. Glass beakers and tubes cluttered the tables, filled with a variety of liquids that remained ominously still as a pair of vines twined themselves through the glassware like loving cats. One table was filled with notes scrawled onto stacks of little chalkboards. The sharp smell of something in the other room made Sorrow's nose begin to itch.

From her protective nest, Ivy looked Harley over thoroughly. Her green eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Did he throw you out again?" she demanded.

"No, no," Harley dismissed. "I just got outa Arkham today! Stopped at the 'Berg, called up Sorrow, got chased by the cops a little - you know, the usual."

Ivy's deep green skin paled. "The cops," she repeated flatly.

"Yeah."

"The _police_."

"Yep. Y'know...guys in blue? Funny hats?" said Harley.

The vines trailing across every surface of the room pulsed wildly. The comfortable nest in the corner exploded into a thrashing bundle of green anger as their caretaker propelled herself to her feet. Ivy, flushed with fury, grabbed Harley by the collar and shook her like a dog killing a rat. "You're telling me that the police were chasing you and you came _here_?"

"Yeah! I mean, they weren't chasin' us anymore, Red. We lost 'em!" Harley gasped, tassels jingling as Ivy thrust her away.

"You lost them," Ivy sneered. She turned to glare at Sorrow. "How did you get here?"

"Taxi," Sorrow shrugged.

"If the cops followed you to Sorrow's, what on this green earth makes you think they didn't follow you here?"

"I toldja, Red, we lost 'em!"

Ivy breathed a very deep, very forced sigh, and buried her head in her hands. An incoherent mumble emanated from her hidden mouth as if she was an ancient sorceress summoning a demon to swallow Harley whole.

"Red?"

Ivy reappeared from behind her hands like a trebuchet swinging into position. "You." She pointed at Sorrow. "Put everything on that counter into the box on the floor. I'll get the rest of my things."

"What about me?" Harley _ping_ed a tassel back into place with a flick of her fingers.

"_You_," Ivy spat, "just sit there and try not to break anything." She wearily flounced out of the room. The sounds of chemicals being hastily transferred into portable vessels sloshed noisily from the back room.

Sorrow carefully avoided looking at the hurt on Harley's face as she gently loaded the chalkboards into the box. "Bad time for visitors, I guess," Sorrow muttered, lowering the tiny slates until they _click_ed quietly into place.

"Yeah," Harley agreed softly, gingerly settling down on the floor. "Maybe she-"

Ivy reappeared, clutching a large Rubbermaid container as if it contained everything she'd ever cared about. Taking small, wobbly steps, she tottered across the room and carefully deposited it by the door.

Harley's chipper cheerfulness was rarely put off for long. "Whatcha got in there?" she inquired, scooting across the floor to the large opaque tub. One red-gloved hand began to pry the lid off.

A set of vines whipped out from the wall and dragged the jester back to her original position, staying wrapped around her like the latest in leash technology. "It's _private_," Ivy hissed, not bothering to look as Harley tried to wriggle free.

"Look, if we're interrupting something, we can go. Really," Sorrow said, nervously eyeing the vines next to her.

"You'll just call another _cab_, I suppose?" Ivy snarled, storing chemicals with shaking hands. "And then the cab driver will tell the police where he picked you up, just like the other one probably already told them where he dropped you off, and then they'll come after _me_. I can't afford to be interrupted! Not now!"

Packing up her entire lab in order to take it wherever she was planning on taking it seemed very much like an interruption to Sorrow. Given that she enjoyed breathing, though, she refrained from mentioning it.

Ivy carefully stowed the chemicals in the container and clicked the lid shut. "Come on. We're leaving," she grunted, hoisting the tub up to her chest and staggering out of the little shed. Sorrow helpfully scooped up the small box of slates and followed Ivy out the door.

"Little help?" Harley called. The vines reluctantly unwrapped themselves and withdrew to the corners. Harley, free again, bounded after her friends. "Wait up!"

Ivy led them to a snowy mound near the road that they'd arrived on. Snow dropped to the ground in sparkly _whump_s as a mound of greenery shook itself clean and rose to reveal a little pink car. A branch obligingly opened the door and popped the trunk open as Ivy approached. She settled the tub inside as gently as she could, trembling with the effort it took. When the container was in place, Sorrow slipped her box inside and closed the trunk.

"I call driving!" Harley chirped, diving into the driver's seat. Ivy, too exhausted to argue, settled herself in the passenger seat as Sorrow sprawled comfortably in the back. Harley carefully backed the car out of its all-natural garage and floored it toward Gotham. "So where do you wanna go?"

"Your place. Your _new_ place," Ivy clarified.

"That one? But it's not even done yet!"

"Exactly. No one knows where it is." Ivy examined her fingernails as they roared past a fleet of minivans leaving an environmental museum.

Three entire seconds of silence passed. "So what's in the box?" Harley asked.

"An experiment."

"But what _is_ it?" Harley pestered, darting in and out of traffic like a hummingbird zipping through a flower garden. In the back seat, Sorrow tightened her seat belt.

"Never mind what it is."

"C'mon, Red, you can tell me!" Harley wheedled.

"Curiosity killed the cat, Harley."

"Yeah, but neither of us has a bullwhip."

"Drop it," Ivy snapped. The cute little car _skreed_ noisily around a corner. "I thought your place was north."

"It is. We've gotta stop ta make first." Harley turned to face Sorrow, ignoring the world rushing by at sixty miles an hour. "You remember that cute doc from Arkham?"

"Yes," Sorrow said flatly. The lack of joy in her voice was probably a hint that she didn't care to remember him, either.

Harley ignored it as she ignored the series of red lights that they were currently whipping through. "Well, he's -"

"Will you _watch the road_?" Ivy interrupted peevishly, taking hold of the wheel and abruptly steering them out of the path of an oncoming semi.

"You worry too much," Harley sulked. "Anyway, S, he's got somethin' ta tell ya. He's at the Iceberg. I saw him there just after I got outta Arkham."

Ivy snorted in disbelief. "You left an Arkham doctor in the Iceberg...alone...for_ six hours_...and you still expect him to be there when you get back?"

"Yeah. I do," Harley said, squealing in delight as she managed to launch the car ever so slightly off of some newly-abandoned construction equipment. "Howzabout it, S? Wanna go say hi?"

"No."

"Aw, c'mon! It's important!"

"No," Sorrow repeated in the same emotionless tone.

"Please? Pretty please with sugar an' sprinkles on?" Harley wheedled, batting her eyelids like a five-year-old convincing Daddy that she really, really needed that pony. "Pleeeeeeeeeeease?"

"Will it get you to shut up about him?"

"Yep!"

"Fine."

"Yay!"

* * *

The Iceberg Lounge was never really a busy establishment. It didn't need to be. When ninety percent of the owner's profits came from quiet deals in little back rooms, there was no need to worry about catering to the public.

A selection of enormous plastic snowdrifts with only a light coating of dust on them rested tiredly against the walls. Behind one of them, Sorrow squinted carefully at the lone figure at the bar. A small mountain of empty glassware was stacked in front of him, surrounded by an avalanche of shredded bar napkins. His dark blue coat was speckled with bits of the thin paper.

Blue coat? She leaned slightly out of her fake-iced hidey-hole and peered at it. He was in a blue coat, sort of like hers, and he'd smeared his face with some cheap grey makeup...sort of like hers.

Was this a trap? No. Well, probably not, she decided, watching him diligently trying to get as many shreds as possible out of a single napkin. She was well aware that he had some kind of a crush on her, or at the very least that he _acted_ as if he did. People who had crushes on other people didn't tend to turn them in to the cops...that is, unless certain people were just making up their romantic attachment.

He glanced vaguely in her direction. She ducked back behind the fake snow, hiding her face behind a huge gaudy penguin in a top hat. This was ridiculous. Showing up at the Iceberg in _her_ costume meant one of two things: either he was a spy or a lovesick idiot. It was hard to imagine which might be worse.

She crept out of the plastic penguin habitat and dusted herself off. There was no time like the present to screw up the future. When he turned his attention back to his drink, she sidled up beside him and settled down onto a barstool. "Well?"

He turned to her, beaming with a grin that disappeared faster than a house key down a sewer grate. "You look _terrible_," he gasped.

"Thanks," she said dryly. "You look pretty interesting yourself."

"What...this?" He tugged on the coat, embarrassed. "Look, I needed to find you, and...can we talk?" The barman studiously began to polish the bar top in a spot that was just close enough to hear every detail. "Privately," he added in a low whisper.

She considered him for a moment. If he was a spy, they certainly couldn't hang around here. At any minute, the place might fill up with cops, Bats, or a delightfully violent combination of both. "We can talk. Not here," she added as he opened his mouth. "I'm on my way to Harley Quinn's place." She stood up. "Coming?"

His face twitched lightning-fast into a bizarre variety of expressions as he considered her offer. Terror was there - who _wouldn't_ be scared of showing up uninvited to the Joker's hideaway? - accompanied by the uncertainty of going anywhere with a brand new ex-Arkhamite and the slightly jittery look of someone who had been mainlining fizzy drinks for the past several hours. Finally, the quivering jello of his expression firmed into nonchalant agreement (or at least, something that could pass for nonchalant agreement among the half-blind in a dimmed room). "Sure," he said, sliding off of the barstool. Tiny scraps of napkin showered down around him like confetti. He brushed at them with a black-gloved hand, embarrassed.

"Never mind that," Sorrow ordered. "Come on. Let's get out of here." She strode toward the door, pointedly not looking over her shoulder to see her former psychiatrist scrambling after her like a hopeful puppy.

The wintry December air cut through the tattered remains of the Arkham jumpsuit wrapped around Sorrow's legs. She drew her coat a little tighter and hurried toward Ivy's little pink car. The back seat, stained with countless bits of pollen, fertilizer, and exciting chemicals, seemed like a warm and toasty heaven after her quick walk down Gotham's snowy sidewalks. Troy squeezed in next to her and shut the door.

"You didn't say anything about _him_ coming with us," Ivy drawled irritably. She examined him as if he were an aphid that had made a lunch out of her favorite roses.

"It's my place and I can invite who I want," Harley said mulishly. "Besides, he's kinda cute. How ya doin', Troy-boy?"

"Fine," he choked, squirming under Ivy's glare.

"Great. Here we go!"

(_to be continued_)

* * *

_Author's Note: I am so sorry for the constant delays. I swear to you that I will finish this story. Pinky swears and everything!_


	5. Getting To Safety

A man's home is his castle. When one thinks of castles, a lot springs to mind - people in elaborate outfits, tables loaded with delicious feasts, and lots and lots of very specialized tools used to injure, maim, or brutally kill invaders and other undesirables. But, of course, no 'castles' in modern times are quite that well-equipped...

Er.

That is, there are a very few homes in modern times that are precisely that well-equipped, with the added bonus of their 'kings' and 'queens' being absolutely stark raving mad. Fortunately, these homes are also so well-hidden that there are hardly any fatalities anymore from unexpected visitors. (After all, cleaning up corpses is _such_ a bother.)

Harley carefully parked the car at the end of a long, nearly submerged pier. She slid gently out of her seat and padded to the very last board on the walkway, where she did a furious tap-dance on a seemingly random assortment of discarded boxes and abandoned boating equipment. The entire pier detached itself from the pilings and sailed quietly off into the night.

In the backseat of the car, Troy Grey fidgeted nervously under the warm woolen weight of his dark blue greatcoat. This whole night was turning out to be a lot more complicated than he'd expected. Here he was, sitting in a car with two of Gotham's most unwelcome citizens, being sailed across a deserted stretch of water by the sidekick of possibly the most dangerous man on the planet. He'd only wanted to talk to Sorrow!

Carefully, without moving his head more than he had to, he peered into the front seat. Ivy was curled in a limp ball, fast asleep, gently rocking with the motion of the waves beneath them as they sailed onward. The car shifted slightly as Harley ducked back inside and slammed her door, nestling in a cozy cross-legged position behind the wheel. She pulled a tattered comic book from under her seat and settled in. Troy took a deep breath to steady himself and turned to face Sorrow.

She was studying him thoughtfully. "Nice outfit," she remarked lightly.

"Um...thanks," he muttered, shifting uneasily.

"I think you might want something a little sturdier than those, though." She gestured at his slightly scuffed black dress shoes. Fighting the urge to hide his feet like an embarrassed schoolboy, he looked past Sorrow out of the window. "And you've got makeup in your hair...Troy? What are you looking at?" She twisted in her seat and peered out of the window, where a froth of bubbles was percolating to the surface.

Water suddenly cannoned out of the bay, drenching the car in a wave that was roughly the size of the crowd in front of Gotham Square Mall on Black Friday. There was something hidden in the water. Troy peered at the window, trying to make out exactly what it was as water streamed down the thin glass.

"SHARK!" Sorrow squealed, throwing herself away from the window. An enormous great white shark grinned at them through the window, exposing three rows of razor-sharp teeth. Its mouth was dripping with red, as if it had recently fed on a nice plump tourist. Sorrow scuttled backward and pressed herself hard against Troy, trying to get as far away from the thing as she could.

"Calm down. It's just Meg," Harley explained impishly as Sorrow's shoulders tried to fuse with Troy's ribcage. "We got her from Florida."

Troy squinted at the shark. Now that it had stopped moving, he noticed that sections of the shark's skin had peeled away, exposing the foam rubber beneath it. As for the mouth - well, what real shark would go around with a bright red grin on its face? What shark could even _survive_ in Gotham's toxic stew of a bay?

"It's fake," he gasped in reassurance as Sorrow's elbows dug into his stomach.

"I know," she said tightly. "Make it go away!"

"She'll be gone in a minute," Harley said, giggling slightly as she returned to her comic book. "Scared ya, didn't she?"

"I _hate_ sharks," Sorrow muttered. As quickly as it had popped up, the fake shark vanished into the depths of the bay. "Are there any more _friends_ of yours out there?"

"Maybe," Harley said innocently.

"Right." Sorrow eased away from Troy and resolutely buried her face in her gloved hands. "Tell me when we're there."

One hour and six creature attacks later, they arrived at a small, overgrown island. Troy was in awe of the amount of work that had gone into some of the creatures. Sorrow had refused to look, even when he'd tried to point out the detail on the fake squid tentacles that wrapped around the car or the little green tuft of hair on the giant lobster that had clacked massive claws at them as they passed.

Harley drove the car up onto the island. As they left the pier, it began sailing along its underwater track back toward home. "And how are _we_ supposed to get home?" Ivy asked irritably.

"There's a buncha motorboats over there," Harley said, gesturing vaguely at the east end of the island.

"We could have come here by boat and avoided all of that?" Sorrow snapped.

"Yep," Harley said happily. "C'mon. This way." She hopped out of the car and skipped toward a somewhat overgrown track. Troy and Sorrow hurried after her, darting mistrusting looks at the foliage of the forest. Ivy followed, dragging her large Rubbermaid tub and the box of slates on the ground behind her.

The trail wound up a hill to a small clearing in front of a cave. Harley stood by the entrance, waiting impatiently for all three of her guests to join her. When they finally arrived, she waved a grand arm at the cave. "Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the newest addition to our list of lairs: the Joker Ca-"

"_Mew_," a soft voice interrupted. Harley turned her attention to the shrubbery near the cave mouth, where a tiny kitten stumbled along. It staggered toward them, eyes barely open, squeaking pitifully. A thorny weed was tangled in its soft white kitten fur.

In one quick motion, Harley whipped her foot around and punted the helpless kitten straight over the treetops. Troy watched in horror as it disappeared from sight. How could she have -

His thoughts were interrupted as the kitten exploded, sending a fireball the size of Wayne Tower blooming briefly into the sky.

"Anyway," Harley continued, ignoring the bits of robot kitten falling from the sky, "we're here. Come on in." She trotted into the darkness. Her tasseled head re-emerged briefly. "And don't ring the doorbell."

Ivy immediately made her way toward the entrance, dragging her equipment behind her with the last of her strength. Troy and Sorrow exchanged an uncertain look. Should they go in? Maybe they could make it to the motorboats...

The robot kitten's head landed on the nicely manicured lawn. A set of two-foot-long spikes immediately sprang out of the grass, spearing it neatly through the eyes. Without a further thought, they turned and bolted to the dubious safety of the cave.

The inside of the cave was really rather nice - that is, for a place that had been designed by a homicidal lunatic clown and his homicidal lunatic girlfriend. The main area would be a masterpiece of purple velvet and green accessories when it was finished. At the moment, piles of fabric were draped carelessly over half-reupholstered couches and lightly bloodstained furniture.

At the end of the room, Ivy was shoving her boxes along with one foot. She leaned heavily on the wall for support, trembling with exhaustion as she gently propelled her vital whatever-it-was in the box along.

Troy tentatively cleared his throat. "Um...would you like any help with that, uh, box..."

The leaves on her outfit, which he'd assumed were decorative, stood up like hissing cobras. If they had had fangs, they would have definitely been swiss-cheesing his eyeballs. "I'm _fine_," Ivy snarled.

"Sorry! Sorry!" he yelped, scrambling backward directly into a table. Ivy shoved the box as well as she could into a nearby room and flounced in after it, slamming the door as if Troy's head was being used as an impromptu doorstop.

Harley scampered into the main room with something white in one hand. "Found it! Want the grand tour?" she asked happily.

"Sure," Sorrow shrugged. "Is it likely to kill us?"

"Nah. Most of the traps aren't in yet. Where's Red?"

There was a loud shattering noise from behind the recently slammed door, followed by a wave of cursing so intense that it probably could have burned a hole in the wall. "I think she's...busy," Sorrow said diplomatically.

"Huh. Well, c'mon then!" Harley grabbed Sorrow by the arm and tugged her along. Troy trailed in their wake, taking mental notes on the only villain lair he'd probably ever be in.

There really wasn't much to it. He had been expecting a warren of rooms that could house an army of henchmen, or at the very least a security room full of televisions and little blinking buttons. Instead, the handful of rooms that were proudly displayed looked very much like a rather tasteless hotel suite. There was a kitchen that looked fairly typical, even if every surface had been covered over with red-and-black checkerboards. The bathroom, still unfinished, looked perfectly normal until you took into account the surgeon's gurney lurking in the corner with a stack of crates labeled "Medical Supplies". (Upon seeing _that_, Sorrow quickly suggested that they go see something else.)

The tour ended in the bedroom. This room was completely finished. Most of the room was painted either Kool-Aid purple or acid green with just enough touches of red and black to make anyone with a sense of color theory cringe. Pictures of the Joker beamed down from every surface. There were newspaper clippings framed on the wall, mugshots taped onto the mirror, and a very large poster of the Joker with Harley curled up by his feet.

"That one we stole from an art show," Harley said proudly. "Isn't it pretty?"

Sorrow took in the poster, paying careful attention to the shadowy host of corpses in the background and the pile of broken toy dolls that the pair were posed on. "Yeah," she said, attempting to be polite. "It's great."

Harley beamed at the pair of them. "Well, I'm gonna go make dinner," she said. "I'll leave you two lovebirds here so you can..._talk_." She gave Sorrow an enormous wink and skipped out of the room, closing the door tightly behind her.

* * *

The concept of _talking_ in the Joker's bedroom was enough to give both of them the heebie-jeebies. Sorrow moved firmly away from the bed, being careful not to touch anything, and crossed her arms. "Well?"

"Well..." he trailed off, twisting two gloved hands together behind his back.

"You had something you wanted to tell me?" she hinted when his silence continued.

"You're in danger," he said nervously.

"I'm in the Joker's bedroom. That's kind of a given," she shrugged.

"No! Um. Uh...don't go back to Arkham," he mumbled.

She raised an eyebrow. "Yes, that _is_ the plan..." she said, clearly wondering why he had bothered to tell her this incredibly obvious thing. Why _wouldn't_ she avoid Arkham?

"No! No, I mean, the doctors," he flailed, raking a hand through his hair. "The doctors are going to do something...something _horrible_ to you. Worse than last time."

"Well, that's what they do," she shrugged. "Doctors are bastards." She examined him as he stood there, nearly rigid with nervousness. He had braved the Iceberg, Harley's driving, and the Joker's bedroom just to talk to her. "Well, maybe not _all_ doctors are bastards. Aren't they going to be mad at you for spoiling their fun? Not to mention the new wardrobe."

"Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, they're going to be mad, but it doesn't matter if they are. I kind of...I quit," he mumbled, staring at his toes.

"You WHAT?" Sorrow shrieked.

"I quit," he repeated miserably. "You're right - they _are_ a bunch of bastards."

She stared at him, almost immobile with shock. "Let me get this straight," she said, slowly and carefully. "You decided that the doctors at Arkham weren't worth working for."

"Yeah."

"And you quit your job."

"Yeah."

"And you put on a costume..." She looked pointedly at his blue coat and coating of grey makeup.

"NO!" he yelped. "No, I mean, I _did_, but it was just to find you! I didn't want to...I mean, I couldn't, I _can't_, I just wanted to warn you and -"

"Good," she smiled, interrupting his hysteria.

"...Good?" He blinked at her like a puppy being told that he really was allowed to sleep on the sofa.

"Good," she nodded. "You're too cute to have your face rearranged by Batman."

"Uh...good," he said uncertainly.

"Any other words of wisdom?" she asked lightly.

"Um...well, I think you should, uh, leave Gotham," he stammered.

Sorrow's amusement disappeared. "Leave Gotham," she repeated flatly.

"Yeah! I mean, why stay?" he said desperately. "You've got money, you've got...well...you could steal a car and start over somewhere! You wouldn't have to worry about Arkham, or..." he trailed off.

"No, I _don't_ have money," Sorrow corrected. "Sure, I've got a little, but nowhere near what I would need to start over. Besides, do you have any idea how long it takes to build up a reputation with henchmen? It would take _months_ to get a foothold in a new city. I'm staying right here in Gotham."

"But they're going to _hurt_ you!" he burst out, desperate to get her to understand.

A small remnant of her feelings for him uncurled itself and perked up hopeful ears. He had quit his job like an idiot and run to her side like an _inventive_ idiot and was standing there, in the Joker's bedroom, warning her about the plans of people that she wouldn't turn her back on for a moment. It was idiocy, but at least it was loving idiocy.

That thought stopped her in her mental tracks. Loving? Maybe that was a step too far. Sure, he had a crush on her, for some reason that she had yet to figure out, but _love_? By now she'd given up all thoughts of him being a double agent for the doctors. A double agent wouldn't be nearly this close to having a nervous breakdown.

"Look," she said, trying to relax him before he jittered right through the floorboards. "If it means that much to you, I'll lay low for a little while. Okay?"

"You will?" he asked hopefully.

"I will." She smiled as he started to calm down. "For tonight, though, I'm still planning heists and _you're_ my new sidekick."

"Couldn't I just go home?" he said, obviously uneasy at the thought of having a sleepover at the Joker's house with three professional criminals.

"I think Harley might notice if you disappeared," she said. He started bouncing one leg nervously again, making his entire body quiver with nervousness. "You'll be fine," she soothed. "As long as you don't make anyone angry, you'll get home tomorrow safe and sound. Well, probably."

With that, she turned toward the door. "Um..." She turned back to see Troy, biting his lip. "If we're, uh...if we're supposed to be together, shouldn't we, uh..."

"Are you asking to hold my hand?" she joked.

"Yes. I mean, uh, if you don't mind, I think it would be...good," he stammered.

"You're _serious_?" she said, shocked. "No one's _ever_...I mean...you are aware that my hands kill people, right?"

"Only when you want them to," Troy answered.

"Well...if you're sure..." She held out a gloved hand. Without hesitation, his own gloved hand wrapped around it as if it might disappear if he waited too long.

Sorrow led her brand-new pretend sidekick out into the main room. They stood hand-in-hand in front of a harlequin-patterned fireplace, in theory admiring the craftsmanship but really inwardly panicking about being that close to each other.

Harley Quinn, clad in a slightly splattered Kill the Cook apron, skipped into the room while banging loudly on a pan with a large metal spoon. "Soup's on!" she chirped. She scampered to Ivy's door, banging repeatedly on her makeshift glockenspiel. "C'mon, Red, it's gonna get cold!"

There was no answer.

"Reee-eeeed," Harley singsonged, rapping on the door with her spoon. "Oh Reeeeee-eeeeeeed..."

The lack of answer continued.

Harley shrugged and opened the door with her spoon hand. "Red, you've gotta be hungry by..._Red_!" She pounded into the room, abandoning the pot and spoon to clatter noisily to the plywood floor.

Sorrow hurried after her, yanking Troy by the hand. They skidded into the room to find Harley crouching on the floor by Ivy. Ivy was facedown, limbs twisted uncomfortably into limp tendrils. Harley scooped her friend up and dragged her toward a pile of curtains on the floor. Without thinking, Troy bent down to help.

Sorrow yanked him away by the back of his coat. "She's poisonous, and you've only got cotton gloves on," she hissed in his ear. They stood back as Harley gently arranged Ivy on the heap of fabric.

"Red?" Harley said, close to tears. "Red, what's wrong? Wake up!" She patted her on the face. When that didn't seem to do anything, she began patting harder and harder.

"Does she look…greener to you?" Sorrow asked suddenly. "I haven't really seen her in a while…was she always that green?"

They studied Ivy's emerald skin. "I don't think so," Harley said slowly. "Red?" She pinched Ivy's arm, hard enough to leave a bruise.

Ivy's eyes slowly rolled open. "Harley?" she said blearily.

"Red, what happened?"

"I'm…fine…"

"No you aren't! What's goin' on, Red?"

"The bottle…the…blue…" One trembling green hand pointed at the Rubbermaid box.

Troy obediently popped the lid off and dug inside, coming out with a large bottle, half-full of liquid. "This?"

"Yes. Give it…" she stretched out a trembling hand. Troy handed it to her and ducked back to Sorrow's side. Ivy eased the cork from the bottle and took a deep swig.

Her green skin seemed to glow even brighter, pulsing with new life and energy. She stretched, luxuriating in the movement, before she remembered the three other people in the room. "What?" she snapped.

Harley, lip trembling, stuck her hands on her hips. "Red, I tell you everything. _Everything_. How come you're hiding stuff from me?" She ripped the apron off, throwing it on the floor and crossing her arms as she huffed, "I thought you were my friend, Red."

"You don't need to know everything about me, Harley," Ivy grumbled. "Trust me."

"Oh yeah?" Harley pointed at her. "You're in _my_ house and those are _my_ curtains you just leaked that...what is that stuff, anyway?"

They examined the small puddle that had pooled in a fold of the curtains. Ivy raised her arm, displaying a pin that had stuck her deeply and stayed under her skin. A rusty orange liquid pulsed from out of the wound. Ivy hurriedly tucked her arm back down to her side, ignoring the pin.

"And now you're bleeding sap!" Harley went on. "We wanna know what's goin' on, don't we?"

Sorrow and Troy shrugged, caught between wanting to please their hostess and not wanting to piss off the psychotic plant-woman.

"All right, all _right_," Ivy snarled. With a lot of effort, she dragged herself up to a sitting position and plucked the pin from her arm. "If you're going to make such a fuss about it...It's an experiment."

_Obviously_, thought Sorrow, thinking of that precious box that no one was allowed to touch.

"There's a company in Gotham - well, a few companies really - that have started using clarium in their processes." Her tone of righteous indignance faded a touch as her audience looked back at her with bewilderment in their eyes. "Clarium poisons plants," she simplified.

"Oh," they chorused like schoolchildren getting a particularly tricky math problem explained.

"It doesn't do anything to humans, so the corporations just go on their merry way, destroying my babies," she spat. "But if the CEOs were part plant, like I am, maybe they'd think twice before they used that revolting chemical. I came up with a little something to slip into their morning coffee. Everything went well, and I had the finished formula in my hands in just a few weeks! Once it was finished, though, I had to make sure it worked, and no one else was around..."

"You drank it _yourself_?" Harley sucked in an apprehensive breath.

"But if you were already part plant, that would..." Troy trailed off, contemplating the range of possible bad things that might have happened.

"It was...stronger than I thought it would be," Ivy admitted. "It was fine, at first. I felt so..._alive_..." She looked peacefully happy, an emotion that she hadn't expressed to anyone in years. "But it didn't stop. Every day I'm a little more plant, and soon..."

"We've got to stop it," Harley stated firmly.

"How? If you've got suggestions, I'd love to hear them," Ivy snapped bitterly.

"Well, what's in that bottle?"

"Plant food," Ivy said glumly. "It only keeps me going for a short while."

"Can you reverse it at all?" Sorrow asked.

"Maybe." Ivy looked away, absently rubbing her fingers over the sticky sap trickling down her arm.

"Maybe? So do it!" Harley urged.

"It's not as easy as that!" Ivy dug her toes into a fold of the curtains. The leaves, not part of a costume but part of her body, twitched like an angry cat's tail.

"Why not? What do you need?" Harley asked, every inch the eager helper. "We've got all sorts of chemicals in the basement and Mr. J said that - "

"I can barely sit up," Ivy snarled, humiliated. "How am I supposed to do anything?"

Sorrow pinned Troy with a glance. "Fix her. You're a doctor," she commanded.

"So is she!" he protested, pointing at Harley.

"Right! So am I!...except I kinda slept through chemistry," she admitted, with a spin on the word 'slept' that probably didn't refer to napping on her textbooks. "Sorry, Red."

"Did _you_ sleep through chemistry?" Ivy demanded of Sorrow.

"Can't sleep through something you never took," Sorrow shrugged.

Ivy sighed deeply and turned to her final hope. "And you don't know anything either, I take it?"

"Um. I actually did pretty well," he mumbled.

"Good. Get over here and help me. You two - out."

Troy turned a wild-eyed look of terror back on Sorrow. "But..."

"You heard the lady," Sorrow smiled. He was cute when he was petrified. "Play nice. I'll be right outside."

"But..."

Ivy pointed a trembling, imperious hand at the doorway. "_Out_!" she commanded.

Sorrow strode out of the room, with Harley at her heels.

* * *

The night passed slowly, as only a night in a lair filled with unfamiliar deathtraps could. Harley and Sorrow spent their time playing cards and listening to various shouts and crashes coming from behind the door.

Sorrow was mildly concerned about Troy's welfare. After all, it was her fault that he was back there...well, mostly. It wasn't like she had _asked_ him to trail her around like a lost puppy. It hadn't been _her_ who had convinced him to get into costume and hang out at the Iceberg...

When a card slipped from Sorrow's gloved fingers for the fifth time that hand, she sighed and slapped the rest down on the table. "You win, Harls."

"You could go to bed, if you want," Harley offered, gathering the cards up. She laid the joker face-up on the top of the pile.

"Nah. Can't sleep, not with them..." She nodded toward the closed door of the makeshift lab as a faint hissing marked the death of one or more floorboards due to something nasty spilling on it.

"So do ya just wanna talk?" Harley asked.

"Sure," Sorrow said, flicking the pile of cards with one gloved finger.

"Great!" Harley sat bolt upright. "So let's talk about Arkham. You were down in the basement, right?"

"Good night, Harley," Sorrow said, shoving herself up from the table.

"But you said..."

"I'm not talking about the basement," Sorrow said flatly.

"Is it really that bad?" Harley said. Apprehensive fear washed over her face. "'Cuz Mr. J's down there, y'know."

"I know," Sorrow said, somehow managing not to sound joyful.

"So how can I get him out?"

"You _what_?" Sorrow said. "No. What? _No_. You can't."

"Why not?" Harley pouted. "_You_ got out."

"I got lucky," Sorrow said. "Besides, I've got...well. My hands."

"But maybe -"

"He's not getting out until they let him out," Sorrow said flatly. "He's all the way down the hall by the security station. I could hear him laughing."

"He was laughing?" Harley perked up. "So he must be okay, then!"

The laughter _had_ sounded a bit forced, and perhaps a little desperate, but she wasn't about to tell Harley that. Besides, maybe she was wrong - she _was_ referring to a man that had been known to laugh with genuine joy while plummeting headfirst off of a building, after all. "I'm sure he's just fine," Sorrow lied.

"It can't be very nice down there, though. I think maybe I should still try an' break him out."

"_What_?" Sorrow grabbed her by the shoulders. "If you try to break him out, you're only going to end up down there with him!" _Shouldn't have said that, shouldn't have said that._ "I mean -"

But Harley was already lost to a daydream of her and her beloved Puddin' in a subterranean cell together. She interrupted Sorrow with a happy grin on her face. "I'll get him out, just you wait an' see. We've got all sorts of nifty stuff around here!" With that, she bounced away from the table and disappeared into the bedroom. There was a loud grinding noise, as if a large bed had just been shoved across a brand-new hardwood floor, followed by the clatter of something that was probably a trapdoor opening up.

Sorrow closed her eyes. Couldn't _anything_ go right tonight? At the sound of a door latch, she opened her eyes again. Instead of Harley, bristling with theme weaponry, the figure that sat itself at the table was a worn-looking Troy.

"We did it," he said, exhausted. "She drank it, she's sleeping. We'll know if it worked in the morning."

"Will it work?" Sorrow asked curiously.

Troy blew out a very large sigh. "I hope so," he moaned. "It took long enough to make."

"Thank you."

Troy looked up at her, astonishment all over his face. "Huh?"

"Thank you for putting up with her. I know she's...well, _you_ know."

"Yeah." He smiled a small, shy little smile. "You're welcome."

Sorrow smiled back. It was almost going to be sad to see him go...but that was what was best for him. He'd go home and start over, and she'd go back to her warehouse. That was what had to happen, no matter how much she might miss him.

Tomorrow was for goodbyes. Tonight was for fun. "Come on," she said, pulling him to his feet. "Last one to the kitchen has to eat leftovers!"

"You're on!" he yelped, sprinting toward the door as fast as he could in his slippery dress shoes.

"Cheater!" she laughed, racing after him. "You were supposed to wait until someone said 'Go!'"

"Go!" he sang out, skidding into the kitchen. "I win!"

"You wish. Rematch!" she cried, turning on one heel and racing for the front door.

"No fair!"

"Leftovers for _you_!"

"I didn't lose!"

"Neither did I!"

The meal ended up being the best leftovers that either of them had ever had. True, they had been cooked by Harley, whose culinary skills would probably have made Gordon Ramsay bite a spatula in half with pure apoplectic fury, but the food didn't seem to taste at all bad as they chatted and laughed through the night.

(_to be continued_)


	6. Getting Caught

It has often been said that you cannot judge a book by its cover. And it is true, in some respects. Just because a man has a shaved head and a motorcycle does not mean that he isn't the editor of Happy Kitten magazine. Piercings and tattoos do not mark someone as nasty and vicious any more than a matching pantsuit or a string of pearls would.

This, of course, fails to take into account that some covers are meant to be judged. You might not always be able to discern someone's personality from their wardrobe, but sometimes you can be pretty sure about someone's motives based on the outfit that they have so carefully chosen. Batman, for example, looked like a big scary creature who would cheerfully dislocate your shoulder because that was exactly what he was. Sometimes things are exactly what they seem to be.

* * *

Troy Grey was not normally a morning person. It usually took at least one cup of coffee to get his brain kick-started and a further two to raise his thought processes above that of the average amoeba.

On this particular morning, though, he woke up bright and early. Perhaps it was simply that he'd slept in a pile of abandoned couch upholstery, curled up like a kitten on a bedspread. It certainly hadn't been the most comfortable of beds. The fact that the heap of fabric was located deep within the Joker's most secret lair was additionally unhelpful toward getting a sound night's sleep.

On the other hand, perhaps it was..._her_. Troy shifted gently to see Sorrow, who was occupying the other half of the pile of fabric. She was tucked into a neat ball, barely taking up more room than an outstretched cat. Her hands were crossed over her chest and snuggled tight under her chin, with her long reddish hair draped over her like a secondary blanket.

It had been an unusual night, to say the least. Troy had never really been on a date. Oh, he'd been out with girls to see movies and sporting events, but it had always ended with the girls deciding that they wanted to spend their time with someone who could manage to carry on a conversation. This, of course, meant that he'd never spent more than a few hours with any given girl, and he wasn't quite sure how such things went for other people.

What he _did_ know is that the previous night had been the most fun he'd ever had with a girl. They had chatted and joked over the leftovers and played a few games of War (which was about the only game you _could_ play with cards that you suspected were marked). Somewhere in the timeless night they had ended up on the pile of fabric talking about nothing in particular until they had finally drifted off to sleep.

Troy settled back with a smile on his face. She was charming, and funny, and she would have been the perfect girl if it wasn't for that criminal thing. Maybe he could talk her out of it. Maybe, if she'd let him, they could -

His ears rang with the distinctive jingling clatter of a beaker shattering on a closed door. "GRIEF!" a voice bellowed at top volume.

Sorrow rolled to her feet, instantly awake. "What happened?" she yelled.

The door slammed open. Ivy stormed toward them, holding a selection of empty glassware in one hand. In the other, she held a rather large Erlenmeyer flask, which she promptly threw directly at Troy's head. He managed to duck out of the way just in time, scooting behind the couch for further protection from airborne science equipment. Sorrow joined him, scuttling out of the way of a badly aimed graduated cylinder.

"What _happened_?" Ivy snarled. "Look at me!"

Two heads popped up from behind the couch like a pair of prairie dogs looking for coyotes. Troy examined Ivy as politely as possible. The leaves on her body which had stood up so threateningly at him last night had completely disappeared. Through the rents they had left in her leotard, he could see pink skin shining through.

_Pink_?

His eyes widened as he met her gaze. Her face, no longer green, was flushed red with fury. "Look what you did to me," she hissed with all the venom of a funnel-web spider.

Troy ducked as another flask winged through the air at him. It shattered on the purple velvet wall behind him, leaving a circular constellation of broken glass stuck in the fuzzy fibers. _He_ had done it? Hardly. _She_ had ordered him around like some kind of lackey, criticizing every move he'd made as not good enough. Well, he had followed her orders, so it was _her_ fault that she was human again. _She _-

A rack of test tubes pinwheeled in an arc through the air, nearly missing him as he threw himself to the left. "Sorry! I'm sorry," he gulped. Perhaps there would be a time _later_ to point out that it wasn't his fault. "I can fix it!"

The barrage of glassware stopped. "How?" she asked suspiciously.

"Well, you still have the original formula, right?" he asked desperately. "I bet if you take it again -"

"It _doesn't stop working_," she growled.

"We could slow it down! We could _make_ it stop!" he suggested, eyeing a nearby table to flee under. "I'll do whatever you want!"

She narrowed her eyes at him. "Harley?" she yelled, not taking her gaze off of him. There was no answer. "HARLEY!"

"I don't think she's here," Sorrow said cautiously.

"Why not?" Ivy snapped.

Sorrow hesitated. "Maybe she's still in bed," she said hopefully, as if the noise from the screaming and glass-throwing wouldn't have woken up an elephant on serious tranquilizers.

Ivy stalked over to the bedroom door and flung it open, storming inside briefly to emerge waving a note. "Dear Red," she read, bitter anger in her voice. "Sorrow was right - I can't leave Mr. J down there by himself. We'll be back tonight!" She threw the note to the floor. "_Sorrow was right_?" she snarled.

"Look, all I told her was that the basement sucked, okay?" Sorrow said from her hidey-hole behind the sofa. "I didn't tell her to go break him out! Do you think I want _anyone_ to go to that hellhole?"

"Well, now she's bringing the Joker home," Ivy grumbled. "Get your things. I'm not staying here for another second if _he's_ going to be here. We're going to your place so he can fix this."

"Um," Sorrow said hesitantly.

"What _now_?"

"I, uh...don't have a place that's not being watched," Sorrow said carefully.

"Well, where have you _been_ staying?"

"Uh..." Sorrow ducked a little lower. "Two-Face's?" she said in a small voice.

"_What_?" Glass shattered in a pentagram of fury as Ivy chucked a full test tube rack at Sorrow's general location.

"One night! One night, that's it!" Sorrow explained. "And we didn't...I mean, I wouldn't _want_ to..."

A chair thumped heavily off of the couch. Ivy had apparently moved on to larger ammunition. "He didn't want to either! He just lost the coin flip and I slept on his spare bed! That was it!"

Troy, huddled under the nearby table, winced as another chair _crack_ed into the floor. Poison Ivy and Two-Face weren't an item. It would have come up at the staff meetings. Maybe they had been together before he started working at Arkham.

Ivy, bereft of anything else to throw, panted angrily in the center of the floor. Sorrow tentatively emerged from her temporary bunker. "It's fine," she said in the face of all the current evidence. "Besides, I've got a henchman - what would I want Two-Face for?" Troy nodded fervently, willing to play the part if it meant that nothing else would be launched at his skull.

Ivy considered this. Then, with a toss of her long red hair, she pretended like her last spasm of white-hot rage had never happened. "Then where do _you_ think we should go?" she asked scornfully.

Troy cleared his throat.

"What?" Ivy snapped.

"Um...I've got a, uh, a place," he mumbled.

"You?" Ivy sneered. "You've had a costume for a day. You couldn't _possibly_ have a place yet."

Troy eased himself out from under the table, avoiding several piles of broken glass. "I've got an apartment."

* * *

It's been said that getting there is half the fun. This only applies if your traveling companions do not include an extremely irritable and newly de-powered master criminal.

Ivy's car wouldn't fit on any of the boats, so they were forced to abandon it. They had stolen a car almost immediately upon landing. (Well, _stolen_ may be a bit much. Anyone who left the keys in the ignition in downtown Gotham deserved to lose their vehicle.) After a brief jaunt across the city, they arrived at the scenic Meadowbrook Estates.

"You live in this dump?" Ivy said, looking up at its tattered facade and vandalized sign.

"It's...what I can afford," Troy mumbled, shame-faced. "This way." He held the door open. Ivy breezed by him, holding her newly lightened Rubbermaid container in her arms. Sorrow trotted after her into the elevator.

Troy's apartment was cozy, and efficient, and all the other words that a real-estate agent would use to dance around the fact that it was one little room on one of the high floors of a decrepit building. A couch with a pulled-out bed took up most of the living area. It faced a rather nice television with an array of video gaming equipment wired up to it. The shelves beside it were packed with cartridges, discs, and controllers, along with a sizeable collection of movies.

Troy hurriedly folded the bed back into the couch, yelping as a metal bar caught him across the kneecaps. He tossed the cushions haphazardly into place and dusted his hands. "Can I get anyone anything?" he asked, wincing as Ivy slammed the door with her foot.

"You can get to work," Ivy suggested crossly, hugging the container tightly to her chest. "Where's your bathroom? We'll need a sink."

"Oh. Uh, this way," he gestured, hurrying after her to the only door in the entire apartment. "Watch out for the-" A clattering sound marked the abrupt removal of all of his personal items from the sink top. "Oh. That's...fine, I guess. What do you want me to -"

_Slam_! The door thudded shut, locking him in with Ivy. Sorrow bit her lip thoughtfully. Well, Ivy probably wouldn't kill him...yet. She did need him, after all. That stuff had knocked her out before, and there was no reason to think that she wouldn't be incapacitated again. He was going to be fine. Probably.

She wandered into the kitchen, which was lightly enclosed by an island. The sink, half-full of dirty dishes, was crammed between the refrigerator and the microwave. All of it was covered with that unique film of grease and crumbs that only seemed to appear in bachelor residences. The fridge held nothing but some ancient takeout and a slightly decimated twelve-pack of cola. Sorrow popped one open for herself and turned around.

There was a picture on the wall. With a slight shock of recognition, she realized that it was _her_ picture - rather, one of the pictures that she had drawn on the walls in her solitary cell ages ago. It was a jumble of abstract figures thrown together into something that may have been a face. The oversized print hung unobtrusively on his wall in a muted grey frame.

Whatever vestige of doubt that she'd still harbored about his intentions vanished in a puff of fondness. If he didn't really care about her, he wouldn't have gone to all the trouble of getting this picture. It was sweet. _He_ was sweet. In fact, he was...

He was not her sidekick, something that she didn't want to think about. He was good, and she was bad, and that was all there was to it. He'd be better off if she left as soon as Ivy did.

She really needed not to think for a while. Lacking any other distractions, she turned her attention to the vast selection of video games surrounding the television. She had never really had the opportunity to play any of them, even as a child. Well, surely they could fill a few minutes while she waited...

Eight hours later, Sorrow was swearing heartily as she twisted a plastic steering wheel through the air. "Goddamn stupid goddamn Rainbow Road," she mumbled, tongue sticking out of the side of her mouth as she guided her little kart past a set of giant gaping holes in the translucent track. "No! Nonononono..._dammit_!" she swore as Princess Peach tumbled helplessly into outer space. With a look of disgust on her face, she turned the system off.

She blinked as the room fell into complete darkness. The light from the television had been the only source of illumination in the room. Well, surely there was a light switch around here somewhere. She hauled herself up from the couch, wincing as stiff muscles protested, and hobbled to the bathroom door. "How's it going?" she called.

The door opened just wide enough to show Troy's face, still slathered with cheap grey makeup. "Fine, I think," he hissed. "She's asleep. I think it worked."

Sorrow peered over his shoulder. Ivy was curled up in the bathtub, so soundly asleep that she resembled nothing so much as a fresh corpse. A pale green tint had settled over her skin, which wasn't helpful in determining her cadaverous status. "She is breathing, right?"

"Yeah. Slowly," he added. "I'm keeping an eye on her. Did you eat?" he asked anxiously. "There's frozen stuff in the freezer, or some macaroni and cheese in the cupboard..."

"I'm fine," Sorrow dismissed. Food wasn't important. "Where's the light switch around here?"

"By the front door." Ivy made an odd noise, something between a goatlike bleat and a demon's growl. "That's...not right," he frowned, turning back to his patient.

Sorrow closed the door behind him and felt her way to the light switch. She ran her hands over the slightly bumpy wall, squinting in the darkness. Where _was_ that stupid switch?

Something outside clicked gently against the window. Sorrow froze in place, heart pounding. No, it was just the wind. Had to be. It wasn't...

The miniblinds rattled quietly as a black leg slipped past them. Sorrow immediately dropped to the floor and scuttled into the kitchen like a crab running from the _Cornelia Marie_. It _was_ Batman! How had he tracked them here? Oh, right, he was Batman. He'd probably been ready to break in here since Troy quit his job. Why hadn't she thought of that _before_ she'd blown the whole day playing video games?

She frantically yanked her gloves off, crouching unseen behind the island. With her back pressed tightly against the cupboards, she forced herself to sit absolutely still. Her foot immediately cramped. She ignored it.

A second pair of boots dropped gently to the cheap carpeting. He'd brought a friend, then. Oh, _wonderful_. Any hope of getting out of this in one piece was quickly evaporating. Maybe they'd search the living room and go away. Maybe they'd get some amazingly important news update and have to go save Gotham.

Through the bathroom door, clearly audible to anyone who was listening, Ivy made another one of those goat-demon grunts.

_Now_ they were completely screwed.

* * *

Batman was not having a particularly good night. He had been up until almost dawn the previous night helping the staff at Arkham clean up after Harley Quinn's ill-planned frontal assault. If she had brought her henchmen, or her hyenas - indeed, if she'd been anything but alone - she might have been able to get the Joker out. As it was, it had taken him a full two hours to pry her and her weapons out of the intake room, and that was _after_ the staff had taken a further three to try and do it without him. After checking her entire route for any little surprises, chemical or otherwise, he'd been nearly exhausted with irritation. There were bank robberies and gang wars and massive plots to stop, and Harley Quinn had to invade Arkham. At least she hadn't had far to go after he'd laid her out on the tiles with a serious case of Flattened Nose Syndrome.

And now no one had heard from Dr. Grey since he'd left Arkham. He doubted that Sorrow had hurt him - after all, all the rumors from Arkham staff were that they'd liked one another - but you never knew with rogues. One mistimed remark and things got messy incredibly quickly.

He and Batgirl moved silently through the dark apartment, closing in on the bathroom door as a strangled grunt came from inside. In one well-rehearsed movement, they swung the door open and dragged out the blue-coated rogue standing over the unconscious victim in the bathtub.

Batman, with the blue-coated rogue firmly secured, blinked as he processed the available facts. The woman in the bathtub was Poison Ivy, who was a lighter green than usual. More interesting, though, was the fact that the rogue in his hands was not female, and in fact wasn't Sorrow at all.

He spun the man around, comparing his makeuped face with the picture he'd been shown earlier. "Dr. Grey?" he asked forbiddingly.

"...yes?" the man squeaked.

Batman tightened his grip. As if it wasn't bad enough that he had to have one love-crazed ex-psychiatrist running around his city, not to mention the handful of others that were in love with everything but sanity. The last thing he needed was another sidekick with stars in their eyes insisting that their villainous idol _loooooved_ them.

"Where's Sorrow?"

"I...don't know," the man said, trembling all over. "Um. Why?"

Batman bent the full force of his angriest glare on the would-be henchman, who cringed backward in dismay. "Because you're both going to Arkham."

"I'm not!" Ivy chirped from her spot cradled in Batgirl's arms. She waved the bottle of plant formula. Clearly something inside it had made her extremely tipsy. "I'm not goin' anywhere with you cuz you _suck_. He does too," she added as an afterthought, waving vaguely at Troy, "but you suck the mostest. Mostestest. Most," she finished triumphantly.

"Arkham?" Grey whispered.

Batman scowled at him. "Yes. Arkham," he confirmed.

"But you can't send her back to Arkham!" Grey grabbed onto his armored forearms. "You don't know! Sorrow can't go back!"

"She can, and she will," Batman promised darkly.

"No!" he gasped. "The doctors! The doctors are going to...they're _horrible_," he mumbled miserably under Batman's blowtorch glare of disapproval.

"I'm going to ask you this one more time," Batman growled, digging the tips of his armored gloves into a few carefully chosen nerve clusters on Grey's arms. "Where is Sorrow?"

"I don't know!" he wailed.

"Maybe you'll know after a few weeks inside Arkham."

Underneath his makeup, Grey's face blanched pure white. "Inside..." He looked around desperately. "But I'm not..." At the sight of Poison Ivy leaning in interestedly, he gulped. "I'm not crazy," he muttered, wriggling as if he could shrug his costume off without Batman letting go of it. "I'm _not_. And I didn't do anything wrong!"

"Harboring a felon. That's a misdemeanor. Grand theft auto -"

"I didn't steal anything!"

"You were there, so you're guilty," Batgirl said helpfully, condensing years of legal theory into one simple sentence.

"You encouraged Sorrow to break out of Arkham -"

"I did _not_!" Grey protested. "I was going to help her, but not like _that_. I mean, it was just...I was only trying to...this isn't fair!"

"Life isn't fair," Batman said coldly. With one well-rehearsed motion, he spun Grey around and attached a pair of cuffs around his wrists. He had just about had it with sidekicks getting in his way. Harley Quinn, the Riddler's new girl, and now this man had all done quite enough recently in the name of true love. At least this one would come along without trying to throw anyone into a deathtrap.

* * *

Sorrow listened to the four of them talking and tried to have her panic attack as quietly as possible. What was she going to do?

The Bats were here. They were taking Troy and Ivy to Arkham. If she just sat here, maybe they'd move on without her. Maybe they'd believe him that she wasn't here. It wasn't like Ivy was in any state to remind them - she was busy singing old pop songs off-key to herself and sleepily complaining that they'd taken her bottle away.

But if they did leave her behind, that meant that Troy would be on his way to Arkham. He'd never make it inside without her. Could she do that to him? He had risked his life to find her, from sitting in the Iceberg to spending the night at the Joker's hideout in Ivy's less-than-tender care. He was nearly the only person in Gotham who gave a damn about her. Could she really just abandon him?

_No_. She turned around as silently as she could and peeked out from behind the island at about ankle-level. Batgirl's bright yellow boots shifted as she readjusted Ivy in her grip.

Sorrow sprang up from the ground, bare hands aimed at Batgirl's exposed chin. With reflexes trained by years of surprise workouts in the Batcave, Batgirl dumped Ivy on the ground and hit the floor, blindly lashing out with one booted foot as she ducked away. It caught Sorrow in the shoulder and spun her backward. With another pair of kicks to the stomach, she was down on the floor, gasping for air and finding none to breathe. "Sorrow!" Troy wailed, craning around Batman to see her curled on the floor, helpless.

She barely felt Batgirl pinning her hands behind her back. As her lungs finally decided to work again, she wobbled to her feet. "So much for...mercy, eh...Batface?" she wheezed.

"You'll be fine," Batgirl snapped.

"Nope. I'll be dead." She shrugged sadly at Troy as the vigilantes hustled them into the hallway. "Sorry, guy. Looks like you tried for nothing."

"I'd do it again!" he said loyally. "Don't give up!"

"You've seen those rooms. I'm never coming out of them. The doctors will make sure of that." Batgirl snorted derisively. "Yeah, yeah. You'd be happy if I rotted down there. Good news - you're about to get your wish." Sorrow purposely stumbled in order to give her a kick on the ankle as they entered the elevator. Since she was trying to kick Batgirl, who had been known to dodge daggers she couldn't even see, she missed.

"What is so bad about Arkham?" Batgirl demanded. "I've seen those cells, too, you know. They're much better than prison!"

"You haven't seen the basement," Troy said bitterly. "Or did you happen to notice the fifteen separate violations of human rights happening down there, not to mention the fact that no one's going to get psychologically healthy in a dark little box!"

Batman, with a sleeping Poison Ivy slung in a completely undignified position over his shoulder, pointedly shoved Troy out onto the street. A police van was waiting for them, lights twirling in lazy circles as the pair of drivers shivered in the front seat.

"You can't do this!" he yelled, digging his heels into the slippery concrete. "You don't understa-_oof_!" He landed in a heap inside the van. "You're supposed to be heroes!" he screamed uselessly as the girls were loaded in after him. The van doors slammed shut.

* * *

Troy Grey was not an angry person by nature. When life handed him lemons, he very quietly went to make lemonade instead of demanding an orange or two. Anger was for people that were braver than he was.

He was discovering that he could be pretty damn brave, though, if he was being brave for someone else. He had survived one of Ivy's temper tantrums. He had survived Harley's driving. Hell, he had even yelled at Batman, something that not many people did without needing new pants!

Sorrow had given up. She'd spent the entire ride to Arkham staring at her feet, ignoring his attempts to give her some hope. And really, what hope could he give her? The heroes were being decidedly unheroic. (But then, they always had been. He'd seen the aftermath of rogue vs. Bat fights before. While the injuries sustained during them were at least partially understandable, the mysterious broken bones that tended to show up in the transit between the police station and Arkham were a new level of unnecessary violence that he'd never even thought was possible.) The doctors assigned to heal her were instead going to harm her. What hope was left in a world where the forces of good were really the forces of hypocritical evil?

The police opened the back door of the van, accompanied by several large men shivering in their thin orderlies' scrubs. Ivy, snoring gently and now fully back to her original green, slumbered peacefully in a set of scrub-covered arms as she was carried toward the doors. Sorrow and Troy were unceremoniously coaxed out of the van by a large, meaty hand on each of their arms.

"It's going to be okay," he said hopefully as they climbed the stairs.

"Your optimism is amazing," Sorrow said dully, putting one booted foot ahead of another.

"You'll see. It'll be okay," he repeated, trying to make himself believe it.

Dr. Carlson stood in the lobby, poking disinterestedly at his phone. He slipped it into his pocket as the large group of new arrivals stepped forward. "Take her to the medical wing right now," he ordered, pointing at Ivy.

The orderly bearing Ivy trotted obediently off. "As for these two, take her to the medical wing and make sure she doesn't need stitches. And him..." He frowned. "Who are you?" he demanded.

Troy took a deep breath. "My name is Grief," he said firmly. At his side, Sorrow jerked out of her reverie and stared at him, wide-eyed.

"Grief," Carlson repeated. "Who the blazes..._Grey_?" he gasped as he recognized the man beneath the makeup.

"Grief," he corrected in that same firm voice.

Carlson ran a hand through his thinning hair, letting out a deep sigh. "Please take Sorrow to the medical wing to be looked over. I'll handle...Grief." The horde of orderlies hesitated. "You can go now," he ordered. The group trudged off, Sorrow still looking back over her shoulder in utter amazement.

"You didn't have to do this," Carlson said softly when they were gone.

"Should I have waited for _you_ to help her?" Grief spat, equally as softly. "You and your group of oh-so-caring doctors that want to lock her away forever in that _pit_-"

"It's not as simple as that!" Carlson interrupted. "You and I both know that no one that goes down there is going to be helped. No one who goes down there _can_ be helped."

"Sorrow can!" Grief insisted. "I know she can."

"No one is going to believe you. Especially now."

"No one believed me anyway." Grief pulled himself up, as proud as he could be while wearing handcuffs. "Without you, there's only one way left to save her. This is it."

"You can't save her!" Carlson shook him by the shoulders. "Don't throw your life away trying to help someone who doesn't need you!"

"She does need me," Grief said. "And if I have to live in that basement as well, then that's what I'll do."

"You're not going down there," Carlson said, exasperated. "No one is. Her cell isn't decontaminated yet, and the rest are full. You're all going upstairs for now." He took Grief by the arm and steered him toward the medical wing. "I wish I didn't have to do this."

"Not as much as I do," Grief replied. The doctor left him in the care of the nurses, who mechanically began to check him over for any injuries that might delay his admittance to the asylum proper. He did his best to ignore them, looking in vain for Sorrow. Well, at least he'd see her upstairs...

He froze in place. Upstairs. Upstairs was where all the other rogues lived.

Upstairs was where _he_ lived now.

Oh, shit.

(_to be continued_)


End file.
